Well, there's a new batch of NAEP test data out, and that means it's time for Richard Innes of the Bluegrass Institute to find our most difficult problems to focus on to support his oft-stated and faulty claim that Kentucky schools have made little or no progress in the past twenty years. You see, he doesn't like KERA. Never has. KERA is his whipping boy.
So, to make a point, let me digress and tell you about an enjoyable book I read recently - Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods.
In the grand tradition of the travel memoir, Bryson tells the story of his trek through the wilderness along the Appalachian Trail. With no real understanding of the trail's difficulty, he spends a small fortune on the necessary gear, most of which is a mystery to him. His plan was to hike the entire 2,200-mile trail in one season, starting at Springer Mountain in Georgia and ending at Mt. Katahdin in Maine. He sets off, with an astonishingly ill-equipped travel companion, aspiring to walk a great distance. One step after another, over and over and over and over. The AT offers an awesome challenge and an astonishing landscape of deep forests and gleaming lakes--and to a writer with the comic timing of Bill Bryson, it also provides endless opportunities to witness the majestic silliness of his fellow human beings.
After hiking hundreds of miles he realizes, about the time he reaches Gatlinburg ,Tennessee, that he still has a long, long way to go. He had covered a tremendous distance, but still had a long way to go before reaching his lofty goal.
Realizing that the whole endeavor was simply too much for them, the hikers begin to "cheat." They skip huge sections of the trail, seeking easier terrain. Skipping ahead to Roanoke, Virginia, and following another 500 miles of hiking, Bryson decided to hike several smaller parts of the trail, including a visit to Centralia, and he eventually hikes the Hundred Mile Wilderness in Maine, which once again proves too daunting.
The fact that Bryson did not complete the trail is not surprising since fewer than 25% of thru-hike attempts are successful.
It's a great read. It's also a half-way decent metaphor for state-wide school reform, and the thing Bob Sexton found to be the most daunting - how hard it is to make and sustain progress as a state-wide system; to keep a well-trained teacher who can reach all students, in every Kentucky classroom. Sexton believed, as I do, that Kentucky has made great progress in student achievement, but still has a long away to go.
This concept has left Innes scratching his head.
After all this progress, most student groups in Kentucky are not on track to reach 100% of the performance goals that were set in 1990.
In Innes's hands, every short fall is evidence against recent claims that Kentucky has been making “great strides” over the past 20 years. He thinks some of the state's educational leaders want to have it both ways.
But wait. Is Innes hedging his bet? He says,
To paraphrase another famous walker in the woods,
So, to make a point, let me digress and tell you about an enjoyable book I read recently - Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods.
In the grand tradition of the travel memoir, Bryson tells the story of his trek through the wilderness along the Appalachian Trail. With no real understanding of the trail's difficulty, he spends a small fortune on the necessary gear, most of which is a mystery to him. His plan was to hike the entire 2,200-mile trail in one season, starting at Springer Mountain in Georgia and ending at Mt. Katahdin in Maine. He sets off, with an astonishingly ill-equipped travel companion, aspiring to walk a great distance. One step after another, over and over and over and over. The AT offers an awesome challenge and an astonishing landscape of deep forests and gleaming lakes--and to a writer with the comic timing of Bill Bryson, it also provides endless opportunities to witness the majestic silliness of his fellow human beings.
After hiking hundreds of miles he realizes, about the time he reaches Gatlinburg ,Tennessee, that he still has a long, long way to go. He had covered a tremendous distance, but still had a long way to go before reaching his lofty goal.
Realizing that the whole endeavor was simply too much for them, the hikers begin to "cheat." They skip huge sections of the trail, seeking easier terrain. Skipping ahead to Roanoke, Virginia, and following another 500 miles of hiking, Bryson decided to hike several smaller parts of the trail, including a visit to Centralia, and he eventually hikes the Hundred Mile Wilderness in Maine, which once again proves too daunting.
The fact that Bryson did not complete the trail is not surprising since fewer than 25% of thru-hike attempts are successful.
It's a great read. It's also a half-way decent metaphor for state-wide school reform, and the thing Bob Sexton found to be the most daunting - how hard it is to make and sustain progress as a state-wide system; to keep a well-trained teacher who can reach all students, in every Kentucky classroom. Sexton believed, as I do, that Kentucky has made great progress in student achievement, but still has a long away to go.
This concept has left Innes scratching his head.
After all this progress, most student groups in Kentucky are not on track to reach 100% of the performance goals that were set in 1990.
In Innes's hands, every short fall is evidence against recent claims that Kentucky has been making “great strides” over the past 20 years. He thinks some of the state's educational leaders want to have it both ways.
[T]he new test results released recently led CBE head Tom Shelton to say:
"The gaps remain painful and too many of those gaps are growing wider, reminding us that we still have major work ahead to provide an equal quality of education for all Kentucky's children.”The news release adds that Prichard’s Stu Silberman labeled the report:
"‘…a call to action for all Kentucky adults on behalf of all our children,’ and encouraged all stakeholders to keep attention on raising performance during the testing transition.”To sum up, no one was crowing about “substantial” or “significant” progress in Kentucky education. Far from it.
Now, here’s the problem.
The comments made on Tuesday don’t mesh with glowing comments made by Silberman in a Herald-Leader Op-Ed just weeks ago on October 2, 2011.
There, Silberman’s opening comment was:
“Kentucky has made great strides in education over the past 20 years.”His article did go on to quietly admit to gap issues, but his lead-off comment was about the “great strides.”
But wait. Is Innes hedging his bet? He says,
To be sure, I now think Kentucky’s public education system has made a small amount of progress, but it is only a small amount.Recoiling from this admission Innes soon gets back into character, but he still can't wrap his mind about what it's like to make a lot of progress, yet still have a long way to go...
If we have a long way to go, and we absolutely do, then how can you talk about ‘great strides’ being made?The truth is, the black/white test score gaps still persist because as black students have improved, so have white students, and white students got a head start. Writ large; compared to twenty years ago all subgroups of students are perfomring at higher levels.
The truth is that we’ve taken only some rather small steps, at best, and we still suffer from the very same achievement gaps that KERA promised to fix – way back in 1990.
To paraphrase another famous walker in the woods,
We have promises to keep.
And miles to go before we sleep.
And miles to go before we sleep.
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