Jobs, jobs, jobs – listen to Kentucky politicians from either party
and you quickly learn his or her “top priority is good jobs and more
good jobs.”
Gov. Matt Bevin
Jobs are the rationale used by Republicans who support
right to work legislation. They are the justification offered by
Democrats and Republicans who fall over one another to offer tax
incentives for business or industry.
Jobs and the economy are also at the top of voters’ concerns in polls.
Hardly
a week passes that I don’t find in my inbox an email from the
administration of Gov. Matt Bevin proclaiming some expansion or
re-location to Kentucky by an employer. The same was true for his
Democratic predecessor Steve Beshear.
If one of those
announcements pertained to your community it’s almost certain you saw a
photograph in your hometown newspaper of local officials and state
lawmakers celebrating (and of course, taking credit for) the
announcement.
So imagine what the General Assembly would do if a Kentucky employer announced the company was eliminating nearly 800 jobs.
Lawmakers
went to great lengths to offer help to western Kentucky aluminum
smelters a couple of years ago. They have tried for several sessions to
help A.K. Steel make upgrades to prevent the permanent loss of about 600
jobs. We’ve approved incentives for the Bourbon industry and the Ark
Park (the last equal to this year’s additional 2 percent cuts to higher
education).
Shouldn’t we support new or continued employment of
several hundred people? For now, let’s dispense with arguments about the
efficacy of incentives. No one wants to see their neighbors without
work.
But this week when the Lexington Herald-Leader’s Linda
Blackford reported the imminent loss of nearly 800 jobs, I didn’t hear a
peep from our governor or most legislators even though those 780 or so
jobs are spread throughout nearly every corner of the state.
Preserving
those jobs wouldn’t require special legislation or incentives from
state government. The jobs aren’t victims of foreign competition or
declining markets. In fact, demand for their services has never been
greater.
No, those jobs are disappearing because the governor and
lawmakers continue to cut funding for universities and community
colleges – despite a decade of preceding cuts and, for the first time in
years, forecasts of state revenue growth.
And unlike jobs whose
workers answer consumer calls or make auto parts or distill spirits,
these soon to be out of work employees develop our future workforce,
which would seem to benefit future job creation.
Heretofore the
impact of declining state funding for higher education was borne almost
entirely by students and their parents in the form of annual tuition
increases. But after a decade of tuition hikes, the rising cost is
pricing a college education out of reach for significant numbers of
prospective students.
The easy justification lawmakers and Bevin
use for this is the need to pour money into the state’s troubled pension
plans. That need is absolutely real; but there was sufficient money to
do that this year and still maintain funding for higher education at
last year’s levels.
But there also appears to be a growing
antipathy among some Republicans, including Bevin and several key
Republican senators, toward higher education.
Of course their
argument is bolstered by the excesses of some leaders in higher
education.
Revelations of the over the top compensation for the
immediate past president of the community college system and the
president of the University of Louisville provide justifiable targets.
But
the real victims of those abuses and the dwindling state support for
higher education are today’s students – who just happen to be tomorrow’s
workforce and taxpayers.
Fayette County Public Schools Superintendent Manny Caulk
unveiled a plan Wednesday that he said will improve learning for all
students during the 2016-17 school year and help Fayette become one of
the best districts in the country by the academic year 2020-21.
FCPS Superintendent Manny Caulk
As
part of his plan, Caulk said he will reorganize the central office to
better support schools. The plan calls for rewriting job descriptions
for all central office senior staff.
The Kentucky
Department of Education recently found that Fayette County had
significant academic challenges and district officials did not have the
capacity to carry out the turnaround. However, Kentucky Education
Commissioner Stephen Pruitt recently said he thought Caulk, who was
hired last summer, could make the needed changes.
Caulk
said his plan specifically addressed the state officials’ concerns about
Fayette County. He said specific district officials will be held
accountable for each of the 100 initiatives in his plan, which will be
posted on the district’s website.
Caulk
said in a 50-page-plus plan that while many children thrive, too many
children are not receiving the support they need to be successful. Last
year, fewer than six in 10 students in the district reached proficiency
in reading and math.
“Alarming and unacceptable achievement
disparities persist for students of color, students with special needs,
students living in poverty or students whose native language is not
English. For far too many of our students, demography continues to equal
their destiny,” Caulk said.
“The fact that nearly half of our
children are not meeting academic standards is unacceptable and
represents a moral failure on the part of our entire community. But this
failure is neither the result of maliciousness, nor incompetence on the
part of our hard-working educators.”
He said the failure to
ensure the success of all students is the result of a system that has
not responded to evolving student demographics, community needs,
societal trends and school expectations.
More teachers will be hired for gifted and talented students and those whose native language is not English.
Jessica Hiler, president of the Fayette County Education Association, praised the plan, as did parent Annette Jett.
Fayette
County board member Amanda Ferguson said it was the most detailed plan
she had seen from a superintendent since she had been on the school
board.
There will be more racially diverse staff and existing staff will better help minority children, Caulk said.
Classroom
instruction must meet the needs and learning styles of all students,
assisting struggling learners while including enrichment, depth, and
complexity for students who are ready to move ahead, he said. While some
specialized programs provide high levels of rigor, students who do not
enroll in those programs still need to be challenged, Caulk said. The
district must do everything possible to focus on hiring and retaining
more effective and diverse teachers, he said.
Caulk said the
district will make better use of data. According to the district reviews
Caulk recently commissioned, the district generates a significant
amount of data but does not use the data to inform decisions or track
progress.
Caulk, along with the United Way of the Bluegrass, will
ask people in the community to give 10 volunteer hours each month to
schools.
Also, Caulk will launch a family university to empower families about issues involving their students.
A districtwide high school student voice team will be created along with student voice teams at each high school.
In
all, Caulk said, more than 12,750 people weighed in on the plan, called
the “Blueprint for Student Success: Achieving Educational Excellence
and Equity for All.”
Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article79896502.html#storylink=cpy
Because Eastern Kentucky University reallocated budget resources
including staff reductions three years ago, its was able to absorb a
2-percent state funding cut for the current fiscal year that was imposed
by Gov. Matt Bevin.
And because of EKU’s action in 2013, the
university also will be better prepared to face 4.5-percent state
funding cuts the state legislature in April enacted for each of the
coming two years.
EKU Regents Chair Craig Turner offered those
assessments Wednesday afternoon at the conclusion of a special called
regents meeting. Nearly four hours of the meeting took place behind
closed doors. It began at 9 a.m. and concluded shortly before 3 p.m.
Current conversations “are bad enough,” Turner said, but they would be “more dramatic” without the changes EKU made in 2013.
Since
then, EKU has made much progress that can be attributed to those
changes, Turner said. This past year, the university enjoyed its
largest-ever enrollment, along with the most academically qualified
students ever admitted. And in the past three years, retention and
graduation rates have both improved.
The challenge for the
administration and regents, Turner said, is to prevent decreased state
funding from blunting that momentum.
“We’ve had a lot of
discussion, a lot of thoughts about what the right decisions are for
Eastern,” Turner said, as he addressed the board along with the
administrators, faculty and staff who attended the meeting’s open
session.
“The right decision for Eastern is not to look at a
budget cut and say everybody gets cut exactly the same,” he continued.
“We have to look at budget cuts” based on “how we’re going to be funded
in the future.”
Kentucky’s universities will be forced to compete
for funding based on enrollment, retention and graduation rates, Turner
said. And EKU will have to make sure “that we excel at those three
things better than anybody else.”
He complimented President
Michael Benson, the faculty and staff on a good year in 2015-16. “Now
somebody has thrown us a curve ball,” Turner said. But now the
university will have to “play by new rules” and make “some tough
decisions,” he added.
The administration has a good plan for
2016-17 that the board is “very comfortable with,” the chair said. And
while some cuts will have to be made for the coming year, none would be
“overly deep in essence.”
“What the board is really focusing on is
how we move forward to 2017-18,” when another 4.5-percent state funding
cut will take effect, Turner said. And that was “the basis of today’s
meeting, for the most part. We obviously reviewed things that are going
to take place in 2016-17,” he said, “and some jobs will be in jeopardy
this fiscal year.”
Noting the job cuts by other institutions and
that personnel is perhaps EKU’s greatest expense, Turner said, “I’d be
lying to you if I didn’t tell you that you can’t have the types of cuts
we’ve had” without people being affected.
All areas of the
university are being reviewed, “from athletics to academics to staff,
etc.,” the chair said. No area, including health care, “will be exempt
for our evaluation,” he added.
“We’ve asked the President’s
Council today — we had a number of questions,” Turner said. “I think we
asked for an awful lot of data. And a lot of that be returned to us for
our June meeting.”
The regents then will begin making “the kind of decisions that will affect the 2017-18 year, primarily,” he said.
Another regents meeting in July is likely, Turner said.
Eastern
is among the few state institutions that haven’t announced how they
will proceed in wake of the new funding climate, Turner acknowledged.
However, “We want to make the right decisions with everybody’s input,”
he said.
The administration has formed two panels, academic and student/staff budget review committees, Turner noted.
But
with much of the faculty unavailable during the summer, some
discussions and decisions will have to wait until the fall, Turner said.
The
board will want to have specific program reviews accomplished and
reports delivered by Nov. 12, along with the results of a study on the
reduction of reassigned faculty, Turner said, so the board can begin
making decisions at its December meeting.
“We really have nothing
to report to you today that basically says, ‛Here’s what’s going to
happen,’” Turner said. “But we can tell you that there is a whole lot of
information that is being requested.”
He pledged that: “Students
will remain our priority and the quality of education will not be
compromised” as efficiencies are made.
The board did take a few
actions Wednesday. It reduced the number of meal service plans from
eight to 13 and raised the price of the block membership seven-day meal
plan by 8 percent and the block VIP plan by 15 percent.
In November, newly selected Fayette County Schools Superintendent Manny Caulk asked the Fayette County Board of Education to invest $600,000 in an overall organizational and structural review of the district across 10 domains. The request fell on the heels of a damning 2014 report from state Auditor Adam Edelen that blasted the administration and left the district under a correction plan. District officials have spent months trying to
address problems in financial and budget systems. Caulk said he was reviewing the district's correction plan to ensure that the problem "doesn't
occur again." Problems. Now he's got reports.
Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article44613585.html#storylink=cpy
The November press release stated, "The Kentucky Department of Education agreed to do the review of district
career and technical offerings at no cost. That review began earlier
this month with School Director Jack Hayes and Program Manager Kim Lyons
coordinating the work with KDE. Contracts were awarded Monday to Cross
& Joftus for a Comprehensive District Diagnostic, Review and Action
Plan, and to Curriculum Management Solutions Inc. for audits of the
English as a Second Language program and Gifted and Talented program."
This from FCPS (via email):
With
just two days left in the school year, Fayette County Public Schools
Superintendent Manny Caulk will unveil the results of his “Listening,
Learning and Leading” entry plan and the 100 things
he’s now putting on the district’s “to-do” list.
“It’s
fitting that we have the culmination of the school year this week
coinciding with a new beginning and a new path forward for our
district,” Caulk said. “As a leader new to Fayette County,
I set out to identify the challenges and opportunities facing our
school district by visiting every school and special program, reviewing
documents, analyzing data and gathering stakeholder input through
surveys, individual meetings, focus groups and listening
sessions.”
The
Fayette County Board of Education also agreed to commission five reviews
to be conducted by independent auditors – a first for FCPS.
Examinations included a review of the overall organization
and structure across 10 domains, as well as audits of the district’s
career and technical education program, services offered for students
who have special needs, are learning English as a second language, or
are identified as gifted and talented.
During Monday’s
school board meeting, consultants who conducted the audits presented
their findings. The board also received a report of the feedback from
the entry plan survey and community
listening sessions.
Tomorrow
Caulk will officially release his entry plan report, which synthesizes
those findings with his own assessment of the district and previous
experience, and outlines the specific the
district will undertake immediately to improve outcomes for all
students during the 2016-17 school year.
The public is welcome and encouraged to attend two public presentations of the plan:
·A press conference at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, May 25, in Conference Room C of the district office.
·A public presentation beginning at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, May 25,
in the auditorium at Bryan Station High School. Caulk will present an
overview of his plan and then move into the cafeteria to give people the
opportunity to ask
specific questions in a small group setting.
The plan will also be available online tomorrow.
“These are just the first of multiple opportunities over the coming
weeks to learn more about these initiatives,” Caulk said. “I again want
to
thank our incredible students, employees, families and community
members who contributed to this work.”
In all, more than 12,750 people participated through listening sessions, interviews, surveys and focus groups.
Kentucky's education commissioner started a three-year trek in
2009 that would cover 50,000 miles as he crisscrossed the state to bring
each of the 173 school districts the message: Kentucky was adopting
tougher Common Core standards.
Commissioner Terry
Holliday's typical day on the road would start at 7:30 a.m. when he'd
meet with the principal of a local school. Then he’d go to another
school and have a meeting with teachers. Lunch was whatever the school
cafeteria offered, followed by more school visits and a town hall, PTA
meeting or some club talk in the evening. Then he’d get into his old
Ford, drive to the next town on the list and check in at his hotel,
ready to do it all over again the next day.
“We were the first
ones doing it. I needed to personally deliver the message to educators
in the district and hear their concerns. We had to make sure we were
paying attention to everyone,” Holliday recalled recently.
It’s been six years since Kentucky became the first state to adopt the tougher educational standards
that detail what students need to know in English and math in each
grade. The efforts paid off, and Kentucky has not seen the strong opt-out movements
that have roiled another eager adopter, New York state. There have been
some state bills introduced to overturn Kentucky’s Common Core, but not
the level of political opposition seen in such places as North Carolina
and Louisiana.
Even
as test scores dipped more than 20 percentage points in the first year
of the more rigorous Common Core tests, the transition, for the most
part, has been smooth.
Scott Sargrad, managing director of K-12
education policy at the Center for American Progress, said, “Kentucky is
a great example what can happen when all stakeholders are involved from
the beginning.”
In addition to Holliday making visits to every
school district, and marking them off with yellow tacks back at his
office in Frankfort, many organizations at the state and local level
were involved.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a big
supporter of the Common Core (and among the many funders of The
Hechinger Report) made a half-million-dollar grant to an education
nonprofit (the Kentucky Chamber Foundation), which then disbursed it in
smaller amounts to local groups that introduced Common Core to their
communities.
The Department of Education selected a group of 500 math and 500 English teachers to create model curricula
for teachers to use as they got familiar with the new standards.
Teachers also received 18 hours’ worth of training on the standards.
As
president of the 15th District PTA, which oversees the parent
associations of individual schools, Heather Wampler received a $75,000
grant to gather educators and school board members to explain the new
standards. Parents and community leaders were invited to meetings that
ran in the evenings in school auditoriums and local centers.
Wampler
estimates that between July 2011 and February 2013 her group held more
than 300 meetings that reached over 850,000 individuals.
County
and state efforts were coordinated so that Wampler’s PTA trained other
PTAs throughout the state, which then ran their own community meetings.
And Wampler and her team created videos and posted them on YouTube to train parents.
Sometimes
the meetings did more than just explain the new standards. There were
also calls to action for parents to intervene early with their kids.
Holliday,
who retired from the Kentucky Department of Education in 2015, says
that being first helped his state avoid the political problems that
plagued the adoption process in many other states.
“The whole
time, I was travelling and meeting with educators, I got a lot of
questions but I never got pushback against Common Core. People
understood that we needed higher standards.”
Now the state is rolling out new ideas for closing it
Common Core State Standards is a good idea, but expecting Common Core - or any any set of curriculum standards - to close achievement gaps is just wishful hoping, or political posturing perhaps. Common Core will close achievement gaps when it assures every student is healthy, has educated parents, and provides them with safe communities to live in. In the meantime we may need to content ourselves with Common Core helping all students achieve more than they once did.
This from the Hechringer Report:
The second-graders in Sarah Bowling’s class at Dunn Elementary were on a scavenger hunt to find “arrays.”
Photo: Luba Ostashevsky
The bookshelf had a picture of three rows of five fish. The door had
an image of four rows with three beach pails in each. Several other
pictures were strategically placed in different corners of the brightly
decorated classroom. The students cradled clipboards with a worksheet as
they moved from spot to spot, writing out mathematical expressions such
as: 5+5+5 = 15 and 3+3+3+3+3=15, to convince themselves that three
fives is the same as five threes.
But three of the students were seated on the carpet in the middle of
the room. They were getting “Dolphin time” — individualized instruction
with Bowling, who was talking them through the difference between rows
and columns.
Two dolphins on the rug are African-American. While the classes at
Dunn Elementary have kids of all skill levels mixed together, there is,
on average, a persistent gap between many kids of color and the rest of
the students.
The different levels are designated as tiers. “Tier-3” kids, such as
the dolphins, are those not meeting expectations on in-class tests, and
Bowling was working to catch them up. Students don’t start taking
standardized tests until third grade, but Bowling is still tracking her
students closely.
A lot is at stake. It was hoped that the persistent gap would be
closing by now. It’s been over five years since Kentucky adopted the
Common Core, guidelines for what students need to know in math and the
English language arts in each grade.
Introduced as an ambitious educational reform at the end of the last
decade to make sure that, across the U.S., students graduating from the
K-12 system are college and career ready, Common Core has ramped up
academic expectations that schools everywhere, including those in
Kentucky, are still far from meeting.
Kentucky stepped into the national spotlight in 2010 when it became
the first state to adopt the standards after the Obama administration
offered federal money to help pay the costs. (Over 40 other states and
the District of Columbia eventually adopted the Common Core.) On
Kentucky’s previous state tests, tied to its old standards, over 70
percent of elementary school students scored at a level of “proficiency”
or better in both reading and math. Once the state introduced the
Common Core-aligned tests in the spring of 2012, that percentage dropped
28 points in reading (to 48 percent) and 33 points in math (to 40
percent), according to the Kentucky Department of Education. Middle and
high school students’ scores also dropped.
Scores have been edging up ever since. By spring 2015, 54 percent of
Kentucky elementary school students were proficient in the English
language arts and 49 percent were proficient in math.
Despite that improvement, within those numbers are hidden divisions
that have existed for decades. Breaking the scores down shows that
African-American students fare much worse than their white peers.
In spring 2015, in the elementary grades, 33 percent of black
students were proficient in reading, versus 58 percent of white
students; in math, the breakdown was 31 percent to 52 percent, according
to Kentucky Department of Education figures.
And those gaps, in many cases, have widened, according to an analysis of state testing data by The Hechinger Report and the Courier-Journal.
In Jefferson County Public Schools in 2011-12, the first year of
Common Core testing, 25 percent of black third-graders were proficient
or better in reading, compared to 54 percent of white third-graders. By
2015, when the majority of those same students likely had reached sixth
grade, the percentage of proficient black sixth-graders had inched up 2
points while that of white sixth-graders had increased more than 4
points.
Graphic: Davin McHenry
The students at Dunn Elementary, located in a leafy and affluent
section of Louisville, had average scores about 20 points higher than
the rest of the state. From 2012 to 2015, its white and black students
saw improvement on reading tests, and the black students in many cases
outscored their black peers in the rest of the district. But at the same
time, white students at Dunn scored proficient or better in both math
and reading at more than double the percentage of black students.
Closing these gaps was one of the goals of Common Core reform.
In the past, “Schools that were in low-income areas and predominately
served students of color often had very low standards for their
students that did not prepare them adequately. When the [Common Core]
standards were first introduced, I sent them to my sister, a college
professor of English, and she wrote back right away, ‘Yeah, this is what
you need to succeed in college,’ ” said Sonja Brookins Santelises, vice
president of K-12 policy and practice at the Education Trust, a
Washington, D.C.-based research group.
Now, Kentucky finds itself at a crossroads. With four years’ worth of
testing to show after its quick embrace of Common Core, it’s clear that
raising standards was not enough to help all learners. In a state that
has tried and failed for decades to eradicate disparities for its
low-income and black students, Santelises said, “We knew that the
tougher standards had to be followed up with extra attention to students
who were behind.” The recent results have sparked new ideas and fueled a
redoubled effort to reach those kids.
Graphic: Davin McHenry
Dolphin time
“Array” was not a term commonly heard in a second-grade math class
before Common Core. It’s a computing term that allows users to scale up
large amounts of data in list-like sets handy for programming. But
Common Core introduced arrays as a way for students to grasp that adding
groups of numbers together is a form of multiplication.
Part of Common Core’s mission was to streamline math, cutting out the
fluff that bogged down old standards in many states, and focusing
instead on learning concepts in a progression that will teach kids what
they need to know to master algebra in high school. Heather McGovern, a
former teacher (now a counselor) at Bowen Elementary, also in
Louisville, said “the previous standards were bulky.” Common Core has
made it easier to teach time, for example, by splitting learning about
hours and minutes into separate strands across three grades instead of
grouping them together.
The Common Core was also intended to add a deeper level of inquiry to
math class: making the ability to describe how you arrived at a
solution as important as memorizing facts. Teachers are supposed to make
children partners in the acquisition of knowledge, helping them to see
that math isn’t only — or even mainly — about right answers, it’s about
exploration and discovery, and the sort of critical thinking and
problem-solving they’ll do in college some day.
Back at Dunn, Bowling was very explicit about students’ need to master repeated addition before moving on.
“Is multiplication the standard for second grade?” she asked the class of 24 kids.
“Nooooo,” they roared back knowingly.
“That’s right!” Bowling affirmed. Multiplication doesn’t come until
third grade, but at Dunn, educators want students to be able to see how
their learning will progress.
“When we have the foundation for understanding how we can add up
groups of things, we’ll then be able to understand multiplication.”
Standing off to the side and periodically asking the students to tie
their shoelaces or say, “Excuse me” as they pranced about the room,
Principal Tracy Barber explained that “Dolphin time” is a reference to
the Dunn mascot. Calling the group that needs extra help something
special is a way to get the Tier-3 students to feel encouraged rather
than discouraged about the distance they need to go to catch up with
their peers.
“No kiddo is stigmatized. It’s all hands on deck till all my students meet the standards,” Barber added.
One of the students looked up from the floor and announced to his two friends, “This is hard.”
Barber knows it. In practice, getting everyone to that “foundation
for understanding” requires plenty of attention and effort by the
teachers.
Second-graders at Louisville's Dunn Elementary
Dunn serves more than 600 kids in mostly white, middle-class Windy
Hills, in the East End of Louisville. But it pulls 15 percent of its
students from downtown and Portland, a neighborhood in the West End.
They’re a mix of black and white students, and most are low-income. (At
Dunn, 19 percent of students receive free or reduced-price school
lunch.)
The kids from the other parts of the city are bussed here as part of a
managed choice plan. The plan means that unlike schools in many big
urban districts, every school here has some level of racial and economic
diversity. It also means that in Louisville the achievement gap is
everyone’s problem. Even here in the affluent suburbs, a big part of
Barber’s job is to make sure that every child, whether from down the
street or downtown, is making progress.
“Every fall I sit down with the scores and think about what can be done to help the learners who are behind,” Barber said.
When she became principal in August 2014, Barber started the tier
system. Though students of all levels are in the same classroom most of
the time, advanced students are sometimes pulled out for enrichment and
the children not meeting expectations get more time with the teacher.
Barber isn’t sure yet if the sort of individual instruction Tier-3 students are getting with Bowling is working.
“There are some kiddos who start school behind. They aren’t coming
from a print-rich environment, they don’t have the same word
acquisition,” she said.
That’s why this summer the school is going further to reach its
neediest kids: Teachers at Dunn are volunteering their time for a
three-day camp for entering kindergarteners, to teach them the key
concepts they’ll need to know before school starts.
Behind even before starting school
Hold a book, name different colors, count up to 30, recognize letters
and name parts of the body such as the nose, elbows, knees and stomach.
While these tasks may sound easy, only half of the 7,000 children
entering kindergarten every year in the Jefferson County Public Schools
are deemed ready by Kentucky’s school readiness assessment (known as
Brigance), according to Jimmy Wathen, an early education specialist at
JCPS.
As many researchers have noted, socio-economic differences among
families — which often track with race — account for one of the main
reasons some students start school knowing their ABCs and numbers, and
others don’t. And when kids start behind, it’s tough for them to catch
up.
This summer, it’s not only Dunn kids who are getting interventions
before they start school. A private group has raised nearly a million
dollars to run a four-week kindergarten preparedness program for 1,200
students in Louisville; it may eventually expand to reach all kids
entering kindergarten in Jefferson County each fall.
The program is an extension of the George Unseld Early Childhood
Learning Center in Newburg, a mostly African-American area. The center
opened in 2013 to address the achievement gap, and today it educates
about 350 3- to 5-year olds who are from low-income families or who have
learning disabilities; it also provides extra supports, like dental and
vision care.
A visit to the center on an early spring day found the kids coming
back from planting sunflowers in the garden and having story time with a
book that taught them the names of all the vegetables. The children are
in mixed-age classrooms where the student-to-teacher ratio is 10-to-1.
They are assessed regularly.
Data suggest programs like this could help shrink the achievement
gap. The children who attended the equivalent of one week or less of the
four-week camp scored 47 percent on the Brigance test, while those who
attended the equivalent of three weeks or more scored 74 percent,
according to figures provided by JCPS.
A question of resources
Other educators think that the state and the Jefferson County Public
Schools will have to take much more radical steps to give black and
low-income students what they need to compete on a level playing field
with their peers.
Kevin Cosby is head of the historically black Simmons College and
pastor of St. Stephen Church. He’s been working to improve the education
of the black community in Louisville for more than three decades. The
idea of Common Core resonated with him after former state commissioner
of education Terry Holliday visited the church to promote it.
Holliday “talked convincingly about how schools were failing
African-American children and that the new Common Core state standards
would change that,” Cosby said.
But with the gap stubbornly wide five years after implementation,
Cosby said that the challenge as he sees it is “that the core is not
always common.” If he had his druthers, he said, schools would have
longer hours, provide children with three meals and help them do their
homework. Schools would also be open on Saturdays and through the
summer.
“Another issue is that black students need to have their culture
celebrated, which schools run by white females do not do,” he said.
“Only by being proud of their history can students reach their highest
levels of achievement.”
Now Cosby said he is “an ally” of voices that advocate for more
resources to be shifted to zip codes where predominately students of
color live. This is the goal of Jerry Stephenson, the minister at the
Midwest Church of Christ who leads the “Pastors in Action Coalition,” a
group of 50 Kentucky pastors who aim to bring charter schools to the
state (Kentucky is currently one of eight states without charter
schools). A bill was introduced to the state legislature in March and was passed in the Senate but killed in the House.
The moral imperative
In Kentucky, African-American males are more likely to go to prison
than complete a four-year college degree, Terry Holliday said in a
recent interview. It’s one of the main reasons he brought Common Core to
Kentucky.
In a 2015 blog post before he stepped down, Holliday argued that it
was a “moral imperative” for the state to help more students reach a
higher level of learning. To make his case, he presented some “startling
numbers” about the present-day situation.
“We have more than 80,000 students performing at the novice level in
reading and more than 60,000 students performing at the novice level in
math,” he wrote. “These are the students who will be challenged to
complete high school. These are the students who will not reach college-
and career-readiness. These are the students who will need social
services. These are the students who have a high likelihood of
incarceration. These are the students that Kentucky must care more about
and provide intervention for before it is too late.”
The inauguration of Gov. Matt Bevin has since put Kentucky’s Common
Core reforms in limbo. Bevin campaigned against Common Core, although
his administration may only “tweak the standards,” in the words of the
new state education commissioner, Stephen Pruitt, who previously worked
at the nonprofit Achieve, a major supporter of Common Core.
Common Core’s staying power now depends on politics — and on whether the state’s achievement gap finally starts to shrink.
Pruitt is encouraged by the current efforts at schools such as at
Dunn to address the individual needs of students. In a similar vein, the
Kentucky Department of Education recently started the Novice Reduction
for Gap Closure program, which is focused entirely on closing the
state’s achievement gap. Among other things, it helps teachers become
more sensitive and culturally attuned to the level of diversity in their
classrooms. An online platform shares the advice of teachers with
experience in diverse schools, and the state is working with districts
to suggest interventions teachers can use to reach students. Pruitt
expects these new efforts to close what he calls “the opportunity gap.”
More than five years in, Kentucky may be ahead of the rest of the
country on its use of the Common Core, but Common Core’s supporters say
the state and the standards still need more time to move the needle.
“We’re still at the start of implementation,” said Education Trust’s
Santelises. “It’ll take longer to see the results of Common Core.”
In the interest of full disclosure, I was interviewed by author Luba Ostashevsky for this report.
Fewer standardized tests for your kids and less importance placed on
them: These are two of the big changes the Kentucky education
commissioner hopes to bring schools across the commonwealth in the next
year.
Ed Commissioner Stephen Pruitt
Stephen Pruitt sat down with WLKY’s Ben Jackey to talk about the major changes ahead for students, teachers and parents.
Pruitt
traveled to 11 cities to hear what communities had to say about
Kentucky's accountability model, the measure of whether a school is
successful or failing.
Pruitt wants to revamp the model to reduce the weight of testing on a school's label.
Some question if that would water-down the system.
“People are frustrated with tests just dominating the whole conversation,” Pruitt said.
Pruitt inherited a state-accountability model almost entirely composed of standardized test results.
By
the 2017-18 school year, that will change. Pruitt awaits input from
across the commonwealth, but plans a major shift to include things like
advanced classes opportunities, art options and school environment --
all to help determine whether a school is succeeding or failing.
“It
can't be just about the test. If it is, I think we're losing out on the
focus of ensuring that we have good citizens when they graduate and not
just good test-takers,” Pruitt said.
Pruitt also wants to move
away from percentile ranking system. Which means a district like
Jefferson County Public Schools may not be classified as performing in
the lowest quarter of the state in comparison to other districts as it
is now.
When asked if this would weaken the accountability model,
Pruitt said he felt it would make it stronger by measuring a variety of
factors that affect good and bad test results.
Pruitt plans to
talk with districts about the number of standardized tests they
implement in order to get a better predictor of how students are faring
before the state K-prep test.
Pruitt said it is on him and his
team to help teachers with the state teaching standards so they know
where their student is, without more tests.
“And then you get into
the whole issue of test prep. We need to figure out that the best test
prep in the world is just good teaching,” Pruitt said.
Pruitt delayed the roll-out of the next generation standard testing when he arrived in October.
It
was supposed to happen this year, but will instead go into effect in
2017-18 along with the new accountability model, which right now has no
definitive timetable for completion.
Years of cuts in state funding for
public colleges and universities have driven up tuition and harmed students’
educational experiences by forcing faculty reductions, fewer course offerings,
and campus closings. These choices have made college less affordable and
less accessible for students who need degrees to succeed in today’s economy.
Years of cuts have made college less affordable and less
accessible for students.Though some states have begun to restore
some of the deep cuts in financial support for public two- and four-year
colleges since the recession hit, their support remains far below previous
levels. In total, after adjusting for inflation, of the states that have
enacted full higher education budgets for the current school year, funding for
public two- and four-year colleges is $8.7 billion below what it was just prior
to the recession.[2]
As states have slashed higher
education funding, the price of attending public colleges has risen
significantly faster than the growth in median income. For the average
student, increases in federal student aid and the availability of tax credits
have not kept up, jeopardizing the ability of many to afford the college
education that is key to their long-term financial success.
States that renew their commitment
to a high-quality, affordable system of public higher education by increasing
the revenue these schools receive will help build a stronger middle class and
develop the entrepreneurs and skilled workers that are needed in the new
century.
Figure 1
Of the states that have finalized
their higher education budgets for the current school year, after adjusting for
inflation:[3]
Forty-five
states — all except Montana, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Wyoming — are
spending less per student in the 2015-16 school year than they did before
the recession.[4]
States
cut funding deeply after the recession hit. The average state is
spending $1,525, or 17 percent, less per student than before the
recession.
Per-student
funding in eight states — Alabama, Arizona, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana,
New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina — is down by more than 30
percent since the start of the recession.
In
11 states, per-student funding fell over the last year. Of these,
three states — Arkansas, Kentucky, and Vermont — have cut per-student
higher education funding for the last two consecutive years.
In
the last year, 38 states increased funding per student. Per-student
funding rose $275, or 4 percent, nationally.
Deep state funding cuts have had
major consequences for public colleges and universities. States (and to a
lesser extent localities) provide roughly 54 percent of the costs of teaching
and instruction at these schools.[5]
Schools have made up the difference with tuition increases, cuts to educational
or other services, or both.
Since the recession took hold,
higher education institutions have:
Increased
tuition. Public colleges and
universities across the country have increased tuition to compensate for
declining state funding and rising costs. Annual published tuition
at four-year public colleges has risen by $2,333, or 33 percent, since the
2007-08 school year.[6]
In Arizona, published tuition at four-year schools is up nearly 90
percent, while in six other states — Alabama, California, Florida,
Georgia, Hawaii, and Louisiana — published tuition is up more than 60
percent.
These sharp tuition increases have
accelerated longer-term trends of college becoming less affordable and costs
shifting from states to students. Over the last 20 years, the price of
attending a four-year public college or university has grown significantly
faster than the median income.[7]
Although federal student aid and tax credits have risen, on average they
have fallen short of covering the tuition increases.
Diminished
academic opportunities and student services.
Tuition increases have compensated for only part of the revenue loss
resulting from state funding cuts. Over the past several years,
public colleges and universities have cut faculty positions, eliminated
course offerings, closed campuses, and reduced student services, among
other cuts.
A large and growing share of future
jobs will require college-educated workers.[8]
Sufficient public investment in higher education to keep quality high and
tuition affordable, and to provide financial aid to students who need it most,
would help states develop the skilled and diverse workforce they will need to
compete for these jobs.
Figure 2
Sufficient public investment can
only occur, however, if policymakers make sound tax and budget decisions.
State revenues have improved significantly since the depths of the recession
but are still only modestly above pre-recession levels.[9]
To make college more affordable and increase access to higher education,
many states need to supplement that revenue growth with new revenue to fully
make up for years of severe cuts.
But just as the opportunity to
invest is emerging, lawmakers in a number of states are jeopardizing it by
entertaining tax cuts that in many cases would give the biggest breaks to the
wealthiest taxpayers. In recent years, states such as Wisconsin, Louisiana,
and Arizona have enacted large-scale tax cuts that limit resources available
for higher education. And in Illinois and Pennsylvania ongoing attempts
to find necessary resources after large tax cuts threaten current and future
higher education funding.
States
Have Reversed Some Funding Cuts, but They Must Do Much More
State and local tax revenue is a
major source of support for public colleges and universities. Unlike
private institutions, which rely more heavily on charitable donations and large
endowments to help fund instruction, public two- and four-year colleges
typically rely heavily on state and local appropriations. In 2015, state
and local dollars constituted 54 percent of the funds these institutions used
directly for teaching and instruction.[10]
While states have begun to restore
funding, resources are well below what they were in 2008 — 17 percent per
student lower — even as state revenues have returned to pre-recession levels.
(See Figures 1 and 2.) In the states that have finalized their
higher education budgets for the current 2015-16 school year compared with the
2007-08 school year, when the recession hit, adjusted for inflation:
State
spending on higher education nationwide is down an average of $1,525 per
student, or 17 percent.
In
only four states ― Montana, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Wyoming ― is
per-student funding now above its 2008 pre-recession levels.
25
states have cut funding per student by more than 20 percent.
Eight
states have cut funding per student by more than 30 percent.
The program is an extension of the George Unseld Early Childhood Learning Center in Newburg, a mostly African-American area. The center opened in 2013 to address the achievement gap, and today it educates about 350 3- to 5-year olds who are from low-income families or who have learning disabilities; it also provides extra supports, like dental and vision care.
