Legislative Committee Hears Testimony on Charter Schools

Yesterday, the Interim Joint Committee on Education met to hear testimony from several stakeholders on the issue of charter schools for Kentucky.

KSN&C attended the event and captured some video, but processing it is going to take a while and we'll roll it out as we can.

Commenters at the hearing included Mr Tracy McDaniel who offered "A Practitioner's Veiw of Effective Public Charter schools. McDaniel is the school leader of KIPP Reach College Preparatory Middle school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma which was the subject of a 2003 article in People Magazine.

Others included:

Brent McKim, President of the Jefferson County Teacher's Association and Jo Bell, a JCPS teacher who recently moved to Kentucky from Arizona where she says the charter school law created problems for the public schools. JCTA opposes Charter schools. Ms Bell told KSN&C that, in Arizona, parents of special needs students were asked to sign a statement acknowledging that their charter school did not provide special services and that as a result, a disproportionate number of such students went to the traditional public schools.

Jerry L Stephenson, Pastor, Midwest Church of Christ, Louisville. Rev Stephenson favors charter schools.



Mary Ann Blankenship, Executive Director, Kentucky Education Association. The KEA opposed the previous charter school bills but favors continued exploration of the issue.

Jim Waters, Vice president of Policy and Communications, Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions. BIPPS favors charter schools.



Robert Lewis, Associate Superintendent for Student services, Hardin County Schools with the Kentucky Assiciation of School Administrators. KASA's position is that those factors that make a great school (strong leadership, parental involvement...) are not a product of charter schools, but are possible in adequately supported traditional public schools.



Bill Scott, Executive Director, and Shannon Pratt Stiglitz, Assistant Director for Government Relations, Kentucky School Board Association. KSBA is concerned that charters would divert funding away from traditional public schools and that any charters should be required to serve all students, including stusdents with special needs.



And this from Wilson Sears representing the Kentuucky Association of School Superintendents:

Chairman Winters, Members of the committee---On behalf of the School Superintendents across Kentucky, thanks for the invitation to be here.

We have been asked here to discuss Charter Schools. When compiling my thoughts regarding this controversial issue, an issue resulting in a disarray of research findings with no clear evidence that charter schools have a significant impact on student achievement; my question became not whether we need charter schools but rather----do we, in fact, need to distract from the present mission of our public schools; to provide a quality education for all children.

Some thoughts on why I raise that question. My father began teaching in 1934 for $3 dollars and 50 cents a day in one room with 65 students, grades 1-8, interestingly for only 7 months a year. I began 48 years ago in Jessamine County teaching five classes of Algebra and coaching four sports for $3800-----two years later moved to Meade County where I taught five classes of Algebra and started a football program for $6100 and told my wife that I thought our ship had come in!

In 19 years in the classroom, I was never once observed, had one principal who always handed me an evaluation form and told me to fill it out. You can bet I received a good evaluation!

Several of you either are or have been teachers, or school administrators, and I’m sure have stories to tell about evaluations. In my early years we had no substantive Professional development, instructional leadership was occasionally discussed but almost never practiced, we watched kids fall behind with no interventions, we sent thousands of students with special needs home, eliminated behavioral problems by simply sending them home or more accurately to the streets, we had no kindergarten, and early childhood education had not even been discussed, gender and racial discrimination was rampant and we routinely beat kids with boards for such transgressions as chewing gum or not standing in a straight line---our educational system was literally survival of the fittest. Most if not everyone in this room were not drop outs or kicked out victims of what we now know was totally inadequate schools.

I am now beginning my 48th year of involvement in public education. All of the problems I have mentioned are now being addressed. We continuously look for new and innovative ways to educate our children. When I reflect on the almost unbelievable progress made since I began and especially in the last two decades, by public schools in Kentucky, arguably as much or more than any state in the country, It is disappointing to me to hear so much talk about possible charter school legislation in Kentucky, especially when there is so much conflicting data regarding charters.

The superintendents in Kentucky are 70% opposed to charter schools with the other 30% favoring mostly because of the Race to the Top issues. Rather than spend time questioning the value of charter schools which I could do and which has already been done, and I recognize that it’s possible to make a case for charters-----totally dependent on whom you listen to or which set of data you study. Rather I want to spend a few minutes hopefully making the case that legislative and financial support of quality public schools is a better educational direction.

While there is little doubt that we have many schools in need of improvement, the idea that all of our educational woes are a result of under-performing schools and inadequate instruction is a gross over-simplification. While deliberating this issue, please consider what Kentucky’s public schools are being asked to do. We are not just responsible for the regular education of our kids, we also are responsible for health and nutrition, character education, alternate education, gifted education, special education, bi-lingual education, vocational education, early childhood education, we transport tens of thousands a day, we serve more than 10 million meals a year-----more than 50% of them free or reduced, we offer every sport imaginable, and offer counseling from everything about where to attend college to what to do about an abusive boyfriend!

Among our some 650,000 Public School Students, we have 15,000 identified as limited English proficient, speaking some 60 different languages, well over 100,000 identified as exceptional children, significant numbers of children who are latch key, suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome or are ‘crack babies’, many come from foster or institutional care, a surprisingly high number of our students lives with a single mother who did not finish high school. 55%, or more than 350,000 are eligible for free or reduced lunch and perhaps the most alarming, as many as 140,000 of our children are living below poverty level------and virtually all of them are enrolled in our public schools!

It was once considered a given that a child’s character was shaped at home and brought to school like a pencil box or a clean notebook. But just like today’s children come without sharpened pencils, they often come without control of their emotions and impulses, often hungry and improperly clothed-----these voids impedes academic potential more than any school supplies and certainly does not suggest that we should abandon our present course. It is preposterous to think that the math or writing skills of a child in need of food and clothing are not affected by their home environment.

As a side note----In spite of the efforts of NCLB, a flawed evaluation system that stresses the importance of high stakes testing, as recently as May, the Department of Education found that the percent of "high poverty" schools rose from 12 to 17 percent between 1999 and 2008.

These are not problems created by public schools and are not problems that can be solved by charter schools.

The enormous complexity facing public schools in our country today is demonstrated in our attempt to educate this extremely diverse population and I would suggest to you that our public educators are doing a magnificent job. If there exist more flexible regulations that would allow more children to be successful then those regulations should be in place for all children! I believe all here would agree that we need to provide the best possible learning environment for all of our students!

So my argument is not to create some ‘magic’ school but to continue on our journey of improving our present schools. The naysayers of public schools should walk our halls, visit our classrooms, evaluate the level of difficulty our students are required to master, the writing ability they must exhibit, compare the requirements of today’s students compared to those in the ‘good ole days’, to observe the attention given to the safety and welfare of our children, to observe & interact with our teachers and see how much time they not only spend with kids but also how much time they spend in preparing to spend time with kids.

My opinion, it is amazing how successful public education is when you consider what we are asked to do and our critics should be careful in judging school performance until they fully understand what we are asked to do and the resources with which we’re asked to do it!!

Finally, continue our journey to improve public schools or create charter schools. We acknowledge our problems but there is substantial evidence that the overwhelming number of public schools continue to serve our children well while the evidence on student achievement in charters is limited and far from definitive. At this point, I have seen no data or research that indicates any compelling reason for creating charter schools in Kentucky.

Shout out to Richard Innes at BIPPS who tells KSN&C that the committee was only going to allow KET to film the meeting until he ...did something. So, thanks.