Friday, January 11, 2013

Kentucky Cracks Top 10 in Ed Week Ranking

Annual ‘Quality Counts’ survey shows gains in transitions, alignment
Kentucky’s ranking in an annual assessment of all states on key education indicators rose four places, making it 10th in the nation for its efforts to improve teaching, raise student achievement and many other variables related to public education.  Governor Steve Beshear joined Education Commissioner Terry Holliday and other education advocates to celebrate this new milestone today.

Each year, Education Week (a national publication that focuses on P-12 education) produces a special issue, “Quality Counts.” The report tracks key education indicators and grades states on their policy efforts and outcomes. Last year, Kentucky ranked 14th in the nation. In 2010, the state was in 34th place in this annual report.

“Kentucky has made dramatic progress in P-12 education in recent years, and we should be proud of that,” said Gov. Steve Beshear. “This Quality Counts report recognizes all the hard work of teachers, administrators, parents, business and community members to educate our young people which will result in stronger workforce and improved quality of life for the people of the Commonwealth.”

“Kentucky is emerging as a leader in education,” said Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday. “2009’s Senate Bill 1 mapped the course with rigorous academic standards aligned to the demands of college and career; assessment and accountability that drives improvement; and a focus on educator training and effectiveness that results in greater student achievement and readiness. We would not have come so far, so fast, without the support of Gov. Beshear, legislators, business and community members; and the hard work of teachers, administrators, parents and students and staff.”

Quality Counts provides data and information about states’ efforts in six areas:
  • K-12 Achievement
  • Standards, Assessments and Accountability
  • Teaching Profession
  • School Finance
  • Transitions and Alignment
  • Chance for Success (an index that combines information from 13 indicators that cover state residents’ lives from cradle to career)
States were assigned overall letter grades based on the average of scores for the six categories. This year, Kentucky’s overall grade was a B-minus, an improvement over last year’s grade and a higher grade than the national average, which was a C-plus.

No states received a grade of A in the 2013 edition of Quality Counts. The highest-ranking state was Maryland, with a B-plus. Three states received B grades; eight states (including Kentucky) received B-minus grades; and 19 states received C-plus grades.


KENTUCKY
NATION
KENTUCKY’S RANK NATIONWIDE
2011
2012
2013
2011
2012
2013
2011
2012
2013
Overall Score
C
C+
B-
C
C
C+
34
14
10
K-12 Achievement
C-
C-
C-
D+
C-
C-
19
13
13
Standards, Assessments & Accountability
*n/a
A-
A-
*n/a
B
B
*n/a
20
20
Teaching Profession
*n/a
B-
B-
*n/a
C
C
*n/a
5
5
School Finance
C-
C-
C-
C
C
C
35
35
34
Transitions & Alignment
B-
B-
A
C+
C+
B-
14
14
4
Chance for Success
C
C
C
C+
C+
C+
38
36
38
*Quality Counts does not provide ratings on all of the six categories each year.
Quality Counts also provides detailed scoring for each major area, and on a 100-point scale, Kentucky scored at 90 or above in five areas: School Accountability (Standards, Assessment & Accountability); Building & Supporting Capacity (Teaching Profession); Early Childhood Education; College Readiness; and Economy and Workforce (Transitions and Alignment). Kentucky received a perfect score in School Accountability and Economy & Workforce. The state’s lowest score was in Spending (School Finance), in which Kentucky’s total was 53.4 points.

DETAILED SCORING INFORMATION – QUALITY COUNTS


Kentucky
U.S. Average
Chance for Success
Early Foundations
76.7
79.3
School Years
71.9
75.
Adult Outcomes
69.5
76.8
K-12 Achievement
Status
62.6
64.2
Change
75.2
70.6
Equity
80.4
77.8
Standards, Assessments & Accountability
Standards
82.1
87.3
Assessments
88.3
83.3
School Accountability
100.0
85.3
Teaching Profession
Accountability for Quality
79.4
74.5
Incentives & Allocation
76.9
70.4
Building & Supporting Capacity
90.0
72.6
School Finance
Equity
89.1
86.6
Spending
53.4
64.9
Transitions & Alignment
Early-Childhood Education
90.0
84.1
College Readiness
90.0
69.2
Economy & Workforce
100.0
92.2

This is the 17th edition of the annual Quality Counts report, and the theme this year is the impact of a school’s social and disciplinary environment on students’ ability to learn and on the teacher and administrators tasked with guiding them.

The full report is available at http://www.edweek.org/.

SOURCE: Governor's Press release.

4 comments:

Richard Innes said...

Good Grief! Kentucky was outranked in this contrived report by both Arkansas and West Virginia.

West Virginia (ranked at #9) managed to score high overall despite the fact that even the Quality Counts folks had to give the state an "F" for the state's dismal K-12 Achievement, arguably the most important part of the whole Quality Count evaluation.

Arkansas (Ranked even higher at #5)did little better in this key area, only getting a "D."

Kentucky's award of 10th place is certainly questionable, but the even higher placements for Arkansas and West Virginia expose the serious short-comings in the Quality Counts report. EdWeek needs to go back to school on this report series.

Anonymous said...

I agree with previous respondent; if WV and AR are ahead of us when we are #10, not sure why we should have ever worried about how we ranked according to this quality counts analysis.

Conversly, if we want to put a lot of faith in this report why are we wasting time worrying about teaching profession, transitions or school accountabiliytas we appear to be way ahead of the pack. Doesn't make any sense.

Most ironic aspect is we really haven't put anything in place via SB1 long enough to really gaurner any reliable data which could attribute change to this intervention beyond the proposals of what we say we are going to do.

Richard Day said...

Richard,

I actually thought about you when I saw this report. I knew you would attack any good news about public schools in Kentucky and only wondered how - but West Virginia and Arkansas? That's it?

Yes, Ed Week (like BIPPS, NCTQ, and everybody else) picks and chooses their data points. They structure reports to support what they believe. But on a fairly standard set of measures, Kentucky continues to show more improvement than Kentuckians have any right to expect.

Kentucky actually earned an F for school funding but Ed Week fudged that up a bit - claiming Kentucky has equitable funding, which I'm fairly certain is no longer true, and is certainly less and less true every day.

Thanks for being consistent.

Richard

Anonymous said...

We may be improving but we won't be able to keep that momentum if we continue to create unfunded mandates for schools and teachers which can't be collectively sustained at current resource levels. Like the federal government, we are going to have to start making some tough decisions about what is most important on the educational table instead of expecting folks to do more with less (not to say that government is doing that by any means).