Kentucky School News and Commentary

KARE: Why public charter schools are important

2012-01-30T11:02:00.001-05:00

Wayne Lewis and Hal Heiner of Kentuckians Advocating Reform in Education (KARE) described their vision for charter schools in Kentucky this week, but with regrettable hypernbole.

This from Wayne Lewis and Hal Heiner in C-J:

For Kentucky, we want a charter school law that has a high threshold; meaning applicants wanting to open charter schools will have to meet a rigorous standard before being granted a charter. We also want the law written so that charter schools that fail to meet their agreed upon expectations will be shut down with minimal difficulty.

Good. Having a strong law is crucial. But then...

In addition to this outcomes-based accountability that comes with charter schools, any parent that is unhappy with the charter school that their child attends simply takes the child out of the charter school and sends him/her to another school.

Another school? It might have been more honest to suggest that such students would be returned to the traditional public school, which is an important consideration since it relates to the issue of charters "creaming" students from the traditional public schools. Then there's this...

Charter schools provide additional school options for parents. We believe firmly that every parent should have public school options when deciding on a school for his/her child. No parent should be forced to continue to send his or her child to a school that cannot or does not serve that child’s needs. But unfortunately, tens of thousands of parents in Kentucky are forced to do just that. As we work to improve our traditional public school systems in Kentucky, we must also work to increase the availability of public school options for parents, both inside and outside of our traditional public school systems.

I agree with the general notion, but "tens of thousands of parents in Kentucky" !? I think KARE should be required to tell us which parents these are. All of the parents in which schools? This exaggerated number is inflammatory and untrue. While I agree that there is a good argument for allowing charters is some limited situations such hyperbole only serves to undermine the credibility of the writers.

All parents deserve quality school options; regardless of their ZIP code, education level, income, or social capital.

Not only true, but if we substitute the word "education" for "school options" it is guaranteed by the Kentucky constitution.

Quality public charter schools can be instrumental in giving parents across Kentucky access to quality public school options.

Not hardly, but it could be one vehicle, which if judiciously applied in limited cases of long-standing failure, that can be justified. The problem is that the way one organized for instruction is never the main ingredient in school success.

C J says Legislature should strengthen anti-bullying law

2012-01-30T10:33:00.000-05:00

This from the Courier-Journal:

Growing up, children are taught, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Everyone knows that’s just wrong — especially the kids who grow up to be bullied — by sticks, stones, words and worse — and that number may surprise you.

A recent anonymous survey of more than a half-million U.S. students in grades three through 12 showed that 17 percent of them said they were bullied two to three times a month each semester (that number was highest for third-graders, with 25 percent reporting abuse at that frequency in school); a quarter of girls and almost a third of boys said they had been bullied for several years; most said they felt sorry for bullied students if they saw bullying occur, but almost as many said they did nothing, even though they thought they should, as those who tried to help. Ten percent admitted to being the bullies.

Some 40 states have tried to step in with laws that try to stop bullying in schools, and those are good starts at what have to be holistic attempts to teach and live the Golden Rule, involving adults and children at home, in public, at school, at church, at work and in every relationship.

A bill was filed on Friday by Kentucky state Rep. Mary Lou Marzian, D-Louisville, to strengthen the state’s anti-bullying law passed in 2008. The new measure spells out protected classes of students who are targeted by bullies for their actual or perceived race, their religion, their sexual orientation, their gender identity, their physical, mental, emotional or learning disability, and for other distinguishing characteristics...

The state’s anti-bullying law should be strengthened to protect children when they are away from their homes and their folks. But their folks need to do their own heavy lifting when it comes to lessons of respect. The truth about sticks and stones should be taught and learned in and out of school.

The Obamas, parents of young daughters, have hosted anti-bullying conferences at the White House. Last year, during one of the meetings to help set up bully-free zones in schools and communities throughout the country, Michelle Obama said, “When we, as adults, treat others with compassion and respect, when we take the time to listen and give each other the benefit of the doubt in our own adults lives, that sets an example for our children. It sends the message to our kids about how they treat others.”

Legislators should have everyone’s back on this.

...even if that means openly opposing Frankfort's chief bully.

Sunrise Over Morton

2012-01-30T10:28:00.000-05:00

This from Charles Bertram at the Herald-Leader:

The cupola and weather vane were silhouetted against a colorful sunrise behind Morton Middle School, 1225 Tates Creek Rd. in Lexington Monday, January 30, 2012. The school was named after William "Lord" Morton, a wealthy merchant, who left one-tenth of his estate for the establishment of Lexington's first school in 1834 in downtown. The current school was built in 1938.

Kentucky Chamber members commit $1 million to train school principals

2012-01-30T10:17:00.000-05:00

More donations needed to cover specific counties

This from the Kentucky Chamber Blog:

On Wednesday, the Kentucky Chamber Foundation announced it will invest more than $1 million toward creating a Leadership Institute for School Principals. Over the next five years, the Institute will offer new principals from public and private schools across Kentucky the opportunity to receive executive-level leadership training from the internationally acclaimed Center for Creative Leadership (CCL).

Businesses large and small have stepped up to support this program that has been called a “game changer” for Kentucky education. Member companies such as LG&E and KU, UPS, Makers Mark, Alliance Resources, Booth Energy (of Inez), Computer Services, Inc. (of Paducah), and Toyota – along with dozens of small companies like English Lucas Priest and Owsley (of Bowling Green), Harper Industries (of Paducah) and Planters Bank (of Hopkinsville) have recognized the value of the Institute and pledged their support.

The Leadership Institute trains principals to:

build a high-performance culture in their schools;
influence others to ensure student success;
explore how knowledge of their own individual strengths and developmental needs can produce positive outcomes for students, schools and communities;
practice new behaviors for positive results.

The cost to attend the institute is $9,000 per principal – but because of the donations, there are no out-of-pocket expenses for them to attend. The training includes a three-day session at the CCL campus in Greensboro, N.C., and four days of training by CCL instructors at the Kentucky Chamber’s headquarters in Frankfort.

The Chamber Foundation began the project by investing $400,000 in a pilot program in 2011. Principals who participated in the pilot were overwhelmed by the the effectiveness of the program and the generosity of the Kentucky businesses who sponsored them.

“The Leadership Institute was the single most effective professional development experience in which I have ever participated,” said Jeff Jennings, principal of Butler County Middle School. “When I left Greensboro, I had a solid plan of action that will have a positive impact on student achievement.”

Mulberry Street May Fade, but ‘Mulberry Street’ Shines On

2012-01-30T10:05:00.000-05:00

This from the NY Times:

“I’ll take you to see Mulberry Street,” said Guy McLain, the director of the Museum of Springfield History.

He meant the real Mulberry Street, the one that inspired the first of Dr. Seuss’ 44 children’s books.

I started to think what I might see on Mulberry Street. Truffula trees? Gerald McGrew? Gertrude McFuzz? A Once-ler or two?

That’s the thing about Dr. Seuss. He gets in your head and stays there...

Springfield today is mostly poor and run-down, but on a tour, Mr. McLain, the historian, conjured a city from a century ago that was one of the country’s great manufacturing centers. The Indian company built the first motorcycles here, the ones Dr. Seuss drew for the policeman who escorted Marco’s parade down Mulberry Street. The rifles the hunters used to capture Thidwick the big-hearted moose were made at the Springfield Armory and used by American troops in World War I.

The earliest motorized cars and tractors were built in Springfield. Everett Barney, who donated miles of wooded land to the city for Forest Park — where Ted Geisel and his friends played as children — became rich by inventing clip-on ice skates and manufacturing them here.

Anything must have seemed possible and inventable in the Springfield where Dr. Seuss grew up.

Prichard Breaks Down the Bad News

2012-01-27T18:26:00.002-05:00

SEEK and the Governor's Budget

This from Prichard:

The SEEK base guarantee per pupil will go down:

$3,903 was the original SEEK base guarantee per pupil for 2011-12
$3,850 is the average guarantee that has actually been possible for 2011-12: schools turned out have more students than the budget expected and funding for each child had to be reduced as a result.
$3,833 is the proposed base guarantee for 2012-13.
$3,827 is the proposed base guarantee for 2013-14.
The total funding for the SEEK base will be flat:
$2.9 billion was the budget line item for 2011-12.
$2.9 billion is the proposed budget line item for 2012-13.
$2.9 billion is the proposed budget line item for 2013-14.
Why will the per pupil will go down while the total funding remains flat? Primarily, because the number of students in average daily attendance is expected to rise...

Prich Pushes Back on False Charter Claims

2012-01-27T18:22:00.002-05:00

Kentucky students are not behind
Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, or the nation

This from Prichard:

The information presented by KARE in commercials here and here and website text here invites serious misunderstandings. No matter your position on charter schools, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, and the nation are not doing better than Kentucky on the student performance measures KARE presents.

Fourth-Grade Reading
KARE’s commercials cite 2011 NAEP results showing:
65% of Kentucky students reading below the proficient level.

That figure is correct, but Kentucky is not scoring behind the states with charter schools listed in the KARE commercial. Instead, the same assessment shows:
67% of Indiana students reading below the proficient level.
66% of Ohio students reading below the proficient level.
74% of Tennessee students reading below the proficient level.
68% of students nationwide reading below the proficient level.
Fourth grade reading results do not show Kentucky scoring behind the states listed in the KARE commercial...

Competing pressures put strain on school principals

2012-01-27T16:16:00.000-05:00

This from the Ventura County Star:

Principals are facing shrinking budgets and mounting responsibilities to lead teachers and keep schools running — creating competing pressures that may make the job untenable, a study has found.

Principals reported working 60 and sometimes 70 hours a week. As budget cuts thinned the ranks of support staff, they juggled roles as teachers, community liaisons, nurses, athletic directors, crisis managers and budget gurus.

"The consensus was that even if a principal can do each of several things well, it is tremendously difficult to do them all well at the same time," according to the recently released report from the Center for the Future of Teaching & Learning at WestEd, a San Francisco-based nonprofit group.

As part of its research, the group surveyed 600-plus principals throughout California and followed up with phone interviews with principals, veteran teachers and other administrators. A third of principals said a lack of time created barriers to improving teacher quality.

Meanwhile, the state has an increasingly veteran teacher workforce and a relatively inexperienced corps of principals, the study states. Half of the state's principals have been in the job for five or fewer years, based on survey results. Half have been at their schools for three or fewer years...

Obama on Higher Ed

2012-01-27T16:13:00.000-05:00

“Of course, it’s not enough for us to increase student aid…

States also need to do their part, by making higher education

a higher priority in their budgets. And colleges and universities

have to do their part by working to keep costs down.”

--President Barack Obama

This from The White House:

FACT SHEET:

President Obama’s Blueprint for

Keeping College Affordable and Within Reach for All Americans

In his State of the Union address, President Obama laid out a blueprint for an economy that’s built to last – an economy built on American manufacturing, American energy, skills for American workers, and a renewal of American values. As an important part of keeping the American promise alive, the President called for a comprehensive approach to tackling rising college costs. In today’s global economy, a college education is no longer just a privilege for some, but rather a prerequisite for all. To reach a national goal of leading the world with the highest share of college graduates by 2020, we must make college more affordable.

President Obama has emphasized the responsibility shared by the federal government, states, colleges, and universities to promote access and affordability in higher education, by reining in college costs, providing value for American families, and preparing students with a solid education to succeed in their careers. Over the past three years, the Obama Administration has taken historic steps to help students afford college, including reforming our student aid system to become more efficient and reliable and by expanding grant aid and college tax credits.

This year, President Obama is calling on Congress to advance new reforms that will promote shared responsibility to address the college affordability challenge. If these proposals are passed, this will be the first time in history that the federal government has tied federal campus aid to responsible campus tuition policies.

President Obama will begin the third day of his post-State of the Union travels with an event at the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor, focusing on the importance of tackling rising college costs to ensure America’s students and workers can obtain the education and training they need so that we have a workforce prepared for the jobs of the 21st century.

• Reforming student aid to promote affordability and value: To keep tuition from spiraling too high and drive greater value, the President will propose reforms to federal campus-based air programs to shift aid away from colleges that fail to keep net tuition down, and toward those colleges and universities that do their fair share to keep tuition affordable, provide good value, and serve needy students well. These changes in federal aid to campuses will leverage $10 billion anually to keep tuition down.

• Creating a Race to the Top for college affordability and completion: The president will create incentives for states and colleges to keep costs under control through a $1billion investment in a new challenge to states to spur higher education reform focused on affordability and improved outcomes across state colleges and universities. The Race to the Top: College Affordability and Completion will reward states who are willing to drive systemic change in their higher education policies and practices, while doing more to contain their tuition and make it easier for students to earn a college degree.

• A first in the World competition to model innovation and quality on college campuses: The president will invest $55 million in a new First in the World competition, to support the public and private colleges and non-profit organizations as they work to develop and test the next breakthrough strategy that will boost higher education attainment and student outcomes. The new program will also help scale-up those innovative and effective practices that have been proven to boost productivity and enhance teaching and learning on college campuses.

• Better data for families choose the right college for them: The president will call for a College Scorecard for all degree-granting institutions, designed to provide the essential information about college costs, graduation rates, and potential earnings, all in an easy-to-read format that will help students and families choose a college that is well suited to their needs, priced affordably and consistent with their career and educational goals.

• Federal support to tackle college costs: The president has already made the biggest investments in student aid since the G.I Bill through increases to the Pell grant, and by shoring up the direct loan and income-based repayment programs. In his State on the Union Address, the President called on Congress to: keep interest rates low for 7.4 million student loan borrowers to reduce future debt, make the American Opportunity Tax Credit permenant, and double the number of work-study jobs over the next 5 years to better assit college students who are working their way through school.

Shared Responsibility to Tackle Rising College Costs
Rewarding Schools that Keep College Affordable

• The President’s proposal to reform student aid to keep tuition from spiraling too high and drive greater value will improve distribution of federal financial aid and increase campus-based aid. This reform will reward colleges that are succeeding in meeting the following principles:

1) Setting responsible tuition policy, offering relatively lower net tuition prices and/or restraining tuition growth.
2) Providing good value to students and families, offering quality education and training that prepares graduates to obtain employment and repay their loans.
3) Serving low-income students, enrolling and graduating relatively higher numbers of Pell-eligible students.

The campus-based aid that the federal government provides to colleges through Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants (SEOG), Perkins Loans, and Work Study is distributed under an antiquated formula that rewards colleges for longevity in the program and provides no incentive to keep tuition costs low. The President is proposing to change how those funds are distributed by implementing an improved formula that shifts aid from schools with rising tuition to those acting responsibly, focused on setting responsible tuition policy, providing good value in education, and ensuring that higher numbers of low-income students complete their education. He is also proposing to increase the amount of campus-based aid to $10 billion annually. The increase is primarily driven by an expansion of loans in the federal Perkins program – which comes at no additional taxpayer cost.

Colleges that can show that they are providing students with good long-term value will be rewarded with additional dollars to help students attend. Those that show poor value, or who don't act responsibly in setting tuition, will receive less federal campus-based aid. Students will receive the greatest government grant and loan support at colleges where they are likely to be best served, and little or no campus aid will flow to colleges that fail to meet affordability and value standards.

Creating New Incentives to Promote Affordability and Quality

• The Race to the Top: College Affordability and Completion will promote change in state systems of higher education. The President is proposing a program that would spur systemic state reforms to reduce costs for students and promote success in our higher education system at public colleges. This $1 billion investment would incentivize states to:

o Revamp the structure of state financing for higher education.
o Align entry and exit standards with K-12 education and colleges to facilitate on-time completion.
o Maintain adequate levels of funding for higher education in order to address important long-term causes of cost growth at the public institutions that serve two-thirds of four-year college students.

The Race to the Top for College Affordability and Completion would incentivize governors and state legislatures around the nation to act on spurring this innovative reform. Through cost-saving measures like redesigning courses and making better use of education technology, institutions can keep costs down to provide greater affordability for students.

• The First in the World competition will improve long-term productivity in higher education by investing $55 million to enable individual colleges (including Minority-Serving Institutions) and nonprofit organizations to develop, validate, or scale up innovative and effective strategies for boosting productivity and enhancing quality on campuses. This initiative would provide modest start-up funding for individual colleges, including private colleges, for projects that could lead to longer-term and larger productivity improvements among colleges and universities – such as course redesign through the improved use of technology, early college preparation activities to lessen the need for remediation, competency-based approaches to gaining college credit, and other ideas aimed at spurring changes in the culture of higher education.

Empowering Families and Students to be Informed Consumers

• New actions to provide consumers with clearer information about college costs and quality will improve the decision-making process in higher education for American students and allow families to hold schools accountable for their tuition and outcomes. President Obama is proposing new tools to provide students and families with information on higher education, presented in a comparable and easy-to-understand format:

o The Administration will create a College Scorecard for all degree-granting institutions making it easier for students and families to choose a college that is best suited to their needs, priced affordably, and consistent with their career and educational goals.
o We will also make an updated version of the ‘Financial Aid Shopping Sheet,’ announced in October, a required template for all colleges, rather than a voluntary tool, to make it easier for families to compare college financial aid packages.
o The President is also proposing to begin collecting earnings and employment information for colleges, so that students can have an even better sense of the post post-graduation outcomes they can expect.

Redoubling Federal Support to Tackle College Costs

• As highlighted by the President in his State of the Union address, we are calling on Congress to:

o Keep student loan interest rates low: This summer, the interest rates on subsidized Stafford student loans are set to double from 3.4% to 6.8% – a significant burden at a time when the economy is still fragile and students are taking on increasing amounts of debt to earn a degree. The President is asking Congress to prevent that hike from taking place for a year to keep student debt down, a proposal that will keep interest rates low for 7.4 million student loan borrowers and save the average student over a thousand dollars.
o Double the number of work-study jobs available: The President also proposes to double the number of career-related work-study opportunities so that students are able to gain valuable work-related experience while in school.
o Maintain our commitment to college affordability: Over 9 million students and families per year take advantage of the Obama Administration’s American Opportunity Tax Credit – supporting up to $10,000 over four years of college. In his State of the Union address, the President called on Congress to make this tax credit permanent and prevent it from expiring in 2012.

Building on Progress

President Obama has worked throughout his Administration to expand access to college and provide greater resources and support so that more students graduate with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in the workforce:

• Helping students and families pay for college: The Obama Administration has raised the maximum Pell Grant award to $5,635 next year – a $905 increase since 2008.

Making college loans more affordable: The Obama Administration’s “Pay as You Earn” plan will enable 1.6 million students to take advantage of a new option to cap student loan repayments at 10% of monthly income as soon as this year. Borrowers looking to determine whether or not income-based repayment is the right option for them should visit http://studentaid.ed.gov/ibr.

Anti-Bullying Bill Filed In Kentucky House

2012-01-27T16:07:00.000-05:00

This from WLEX:

Louisville Rep. Mary Lou Marzian on Friday filed Anti-Bullying House Bill 336 (HB 336) in the Kentucky State Legislature.

The measure would strengthen Kentucky's current anti-bullying statute by enumerating protected classes of students who are disproportionately targeted by bullying peers, as suggested by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan. This includes protections based upon a student's actual or perceived race; religion; sexual orientation; gender identity; physical, mental, emotional, or learning disability; and other distinguishing characteristics.

Updated from last year's proposed law, HB 336 incorporates language from a 2011 amendment by Elizabethtown Republican Rep. Tim Moore affirming a student's right to religious freedom of speech regarding sexual orientation: "Nothing in this Act shall be construed to prohibit or deny the civil expression by any student of religiously based opinions on issues related to sexual orientation" (Section 3).

Though Kentucky passed a broadly-worded anti-bullying bill in 2008, tales of continued harassment along with the recent tragic suicide of Woodland Middle School eighth-grader Sam Denham in Northern Kentucky have prompted officials to pursue stricter language in the law. A House panel on education approved the measure last year with a nearly unanimous 21-1 bi-partisan vote.

A Feb. 22, 1:30 p.m. Fairness Coalition Rally will be held in the Capitol Rotunda in Frankfort to support anti-bullying legislation along with statewide anti-discrimination Fairness laws (SB 69, HB 188), which would prohibit discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations based on perceived sexual orientation and gender identity.

According to a recent survey, 87% of registered Kentucky voters support stronger anti-bullying protections, while 83% of Kentuckians support statewide anti-discrimination Fairness laws.

A Shot, but a Miss

2012-01-25T15:23:00.002-05:00

Penguin defecates on state Senate floor

This from H-L:

A penguin pooped Tuesday on the Senate floor near the desk of Senate President David Williams.

The penguin, from Newport Aquarium, was in the chamber as Senate President Pro Tem Katie Stine, R-Southgate, presented Senate Resolution 92, a measure to honor the aquarium for its contributions to the "aquatic world in general through its stewardship of sea life and penguins."

Williams, presiding over the chamber, interrupted Stine to inform her that the penguin "just defecated on the floor." An aquarium employee placed the penguin on the upper part of Williams' desk after it did its official business and while Stine finished with her resolution.

This from Joel Pett at H-L:

Hat tip to Mikey

Can a Few Years’ Data Reveal Bad Teachers?

2012-01-24T20:11:00.000-05:00

This from the New York Times:

With years of data, it seems possible to distinguish good teachers from poor ones. Does that indicate that, after collecting two or three years’ data on each new hire, districts should be using test scores for decisions about firings, tenure and pay?

The following in an online "debate."

The Value of Test Scores

Raj Chetty and John N. Friedman, economists at Harvard, and Jonah E. Rockoff of Columbia co-wrote the recent study "The Long-Term Impacts of Teachers: Teacher Value-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood."

We all agree that teachers can make a tremendous difference in the lives of students, and we all can remember a great teacher who was important in our own lives. The challenge is to identify more great teachers. Value-added measures, which rate teachers based on their impacts on students’ test scores, can help us do so. Our recent study shows that when a high-value-added teacher enters a school, test scores for students in the grade taught by that teacher rise immediately (as shown in the figure below). And the gains don’t stop there: the students who learn from that teacher are more likely to attend college, earn more, and are less likely to have children as teenagers. Even when new teachers are evaluated with just a few years of data, those who get high value-added ratings produce large gains for their students...

Let’s Not Rush Into Value-Added Evaluations

Jesse Rothstein is an associate professor of public policy and economics at the University of California, Berkeley. He has studied the relationship between classroom assignments and estimates of "value-added" by teachers.

The new Harvard-Columbia study provides important information about the relationship between student test scores and longer-run outcomes. But there is much that we still don’t understand. We need careful study of pilot programs, not to remake our education system.

One unheralded new result is that teachers’ effectiveness changes over time. The study shows that some teachers are ineffective at first but improve as they age, while others start strong but then burn out. Policy design must account for this. How many teachers who are fired early on for poor student achievement would improve given the chance? And how many who get early raises will continue to draw them through years of later coasting? Calculations that firing a poor teacher saves $2.5 million entirely ignore this factor...

Test Scores Are Only a Snapshot

Dawn Shirk teaches English as a second language at Reidsville Middle School and Reidsville High School in Reidsville, N.C.

Traditionally, teachers have been observed by their principal once a year, and evaluated solely on that one encounter. Long-time teachers would often go years without having an observation, or even a casual walk-through by an administrator. Fortunately, times are changing.

In North Carolina, we are in our second year of using a new teacher evaluation system, developed by Mid-continent Research for Education and Leadership. Through a series of rubrics, teachers are evaluated in five areas — leadership, respect for diversity, understanding the content they teach, the lessons they create and execute, and their reflection on their own teaching. Sub-topics include use of technology, global awareness, relationships with parents, and the use of data from standardized tests to drive instruction. It is a yearlong process that includes several observations, by principals and peers, conferences between administrators and teachers, and a collection of artifacts that teachers present to demonstrate the many things they do that may not be seen in an observation, which includes parent conferences, teacher collaboration, working with community organizations, professional development, committee work and much more...

We Know Which Teachers to Fire

Lance T. Izumi is the senior director of education studies at the Pacific Research Institute.

A study of 2.5 million students by Harvard and Columbia researchers strongly indicates that individual teacher quality based on student test scores significantly impacts students’ life outcomes. While that should be enough evidence for school districts to consider using testing data to help inform firing, tenure and pay policies, the key will be overcoming teacher union opposition.

Analyzing two decades of test results, the researchers found that improving teacher impact on test scores, referred to as “value added,” even in a single grade raises the probability of students attending college and increases their future earnings. The data also suggests that getting rid of the lowest-performing teachers would significantly raise students’ lifetime incomes. Yet, many teacher unions are likely to be unmoved by these findings...

Results Are In; How Will We Respond?

Arun Ramanathan is the executive director of The Education Trust—West.

There is plenty of strong evidence that we can use data to assess the impact of teachers on student outcomes. In a recent report, The Education Trust—West found that on average, students placed with the strongest teachers gained half a year more in English than students placed with the least effective teachers.

Differences of this magnitude are important for all students, even our highest achievers. But they can be devastating for low-income students and students of color who often enter school already behind. With a series of effective teachers, struggling students can quickly catch up to grade level. But one or two weak teachers can prevent them from reaching their academic potential.

Unfortunately, our research revealed that African-American, Latino and low-income students are far less likely to have access to the best teachers. Just as worrisome, high-need students can lose access to highly effective teachers as the result of quality-blind layoffs based solely on seniority. No wonder we have failed to close the achievement gap...

Use the Data, but Constructively

Sydney Morris is a former public school teacher and the co-founder of Educators 4 Excellence, a national nonprofit that seeks to elevate the voices of teachers in education policy.

The recent study by Harvard and Columbia economists showed a link between quality teaching and higher test scores and between higher test scores and positive life outcomes. Researchers found that students with top teachers are less likely to become pregnant as teenagers, more likely to enroll in college, and more likely to earn more money as adults. These new findings highlight something that we as teachers have always intuitively known – that what we do everyday in our classrooms has far-reaching impact.

Despite this knowledge, a false dichotomy exists between proponents and opponents of using student-growth data to evaluate teachers. We often hear of the “reformers” who want to use student test scores to identify and fire the lowest-performing teachers, and conversely, the teachers’ unions who are painted as defenders of the status quo.

Lost in this back and forth are the voices of real classroom teachers who want meaningful evaluations that give them the feedback and support they need to improve their craft. In Educators 4 Excellence’s work with nearly 4,000 teachers in Los Angeles and New York City – the nation’s two largest school districts – we have consistently heard from educators that they believe their students’ academic growth should be one, among many, indicators of their performance...

Paris Elementary School Teacher Arrested For Allegedly Exposing

2012-01-24T19:49:00.001-05:00

This from WLEX TV:

Elementary school teacher Barton Short was arrested today after exposing himself to a teen-aged waitress at a Bourbon County Sonic fast food restaurant. This was Short's first year as a teacher at Paris Elementary School, but sources tell WLEX that it's not the first time someone complained about his behavior.

Short was positively identified and arrested by police for indecent exposure and he has been barred from campus, pending investigation, by school officials.

Police say they have received multiple calls from the same location and they are contacting other potential victims through their phone records.

Quick Hits

2012-01-24T19:29:00.000-05:00

How schools are coping in the wake of the "Great Recession"?: Many states plan to spend less on education this year than in 2011 -- a symptom of the country's economic downturn that has caused schools to cut back on services and, in some cases, raise class sizes or drop courses with lower enrollment. This article from ASCD's current Educational Leadership offers insights on how best to navigate these difficult times from four educational leaders: Michael A. Rebell, executive director of the Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College, Columbia University; Allan Odden, professor of educational leadership and policy analysis and co-director of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education in the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Anthony Rolle, professor at the University of South Florida's College of Education and chairman of the college's Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies; and James W. Guthrie, senior fellow and director of education policy studies at the George W. Bush Institute. (Educational Leadership)

Students' own technology supplement school resources: Students in a Kentucky school district are being encouraged to bring their own technology to school, says superintendent Keith Davis. He says the devices will help supplement resources the district cannot afford. "We are trying to buy devices for our classrooms when we can, but there’s just not enough money for us to buy one for every kid," he said. "If there's a student who has their own and wants to use it, well, then that frees up the school computer for someone who doesn't." (The Courier-Journal)

How can community schools best support students, teachers?: Community schools can help support teachers who work to address students' unmet needs by providing health and other services that allow teachers to focus on academics, according to a new report by the Center for American Progress and the Coalition for Community Schools. In a separate report, the two groups recommended strategies for community schools on collaborating with partners in the community to improve outcomes for students. (Beyond School)

What are the key elements of successful school turnarounds?: Authors and educators Alan M. Blankstein and Pedro Noguera see problems with the federal government's prescribed methods for improving struggling schools, from failure to diagnose a school's particular problems to overlooking issues with discipline, parent engagement and others typically found at disadvantaged schools. Key elements of a successful turnaround include focusing on positive change, making simple changes to effect improvement early in the process, and providing examples of successful schools that serve similar student groups, they write. (Education Week)

New system for grading Fla. school districts is released: A new system for grading Florida school districts is designed to help better track and compare performance across districts, officials said Monday. The districts' grades are based on students' scores on state standardized tests. Some, including the state teachers union, are critical of the system for overlooking districts' particular socioeconomic challenges or other factors. (State EdWatch blog)

Amid battles, many support a common definition of effective teaching: The bureaucratic battle over teacher evaluations in New York state is overshadowing the fact that many policymakers and educators agree on the common qualities found in effective teaching, according to this article. Many on both sides of the battle support a rubric created 16 years ago by economist Charlotte Danielson -- now being used in several states, plus many New York City schools -- that rates teachers in four areas and establishes a common definition of good teaching. (The New York Times)

Should blogs be used to replace the traditional term paper?: More educators in the U.S. are replacing traditional academic research papers with blogs as a vehicle for teaching writing to students. Advocates of the method, including Duke University English Professor Cathy N. Davidson, argue that the medium is more fun and engaging for students. But critics defend the traditional term paper, saying it requires more student reading and is a better tool for teaching students critical-thinking and other important skills needed in the job market. The New York Times (tiered subscription model)

Survey finds teachers seeking more access to school technology: At least four out of five teachers say they lack access to adequate education technology, according to the results of a new survey by PBS LearningMedia. About 93% of responding educators said they believed interactive whiteboards enhance classroom learning, with 81% saying the same of tablet computers. (Digital Education blog), (T.H.E. Journal)

Is Internet use leading to more student plagiarism?: The availability of material online is making it easier for students to plagiarize, some educators say. A recent survey of high-school and college students found that between 33% and 40% have committed "cut-and-paste plagiarism." A high-school teacher in Pennsylvania says she uses a software program called Turnitin, which scans the Internet for signs of plagiarism. She also focuses on teaching students how to properly cite their work and confronting plagiarism when it is discovered. (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)

Teachers fill a void by writing their own textbooks: Some high-school teachers who can't find the teaching materials they need have written their own textbooks. A teacher in Utah wrote a book about sports psychology after finding there were none available for high-school students, and a teacher in Georgia encountered a similar problem when textbook manufacturers did not respond to a change in the state's math curriculum. A potential drawback is that teachers often can repeat in class what they've written in the textbook. (High School Notes blog)

Kentucky. districts cut fuel costs with hybrid buses: Districts in Kentucky have a fleet of 160 hybrid school buses, which use a combination of diesel fuel and electricity to operate. The state is in the early stages of an experiment to determine if the buses could yield significant savings in fuel spending. In Jefferson County, which has 50 hybrid buses, officials expect to save at least $75,000 thanks to the hybrid buses' better gas mileage. (WLEX-TV)

Md. county may eliminate reading instruction in middle school: School board officials in Howard County, Md., are considering a new schedule for middle-school students that would eliminate traditional reading classes. Instead, literacy instruction would be integrated in other courses throughout the school day. The change would not affect students reading below grade level, who still would receive reading-specific instruction, and advanced readers could elect to take a course in "advanced inquiry and innovation." (The Sun)

Can school choice improve education in the U.S.?: A nationwide campaign is promoting school choice as a way to improve education in the U.S. The second annual School Choice Week is set to include more than 350 rallies and other events nationwide. In Utah, the state teachers union criticized the movement, saying that charters and alternative schools divert funding and resources from traditional public schools. "To promote choice is not necessarily the same thing as promoting educational excellence, and we would much rather promote educational excellence," said Mike Kelley, the Utah Education Association's director of communications. (The Spectrum & Daily News)

How to create engaging lessons using mobile technology: School Technology Director Anthony Luscre suggests in a blog that educators capitalize on students' engagement with mobile devices as communication tools to provide more dynamic and interactive learning opportunities. Luscre debunks common concerns about using the devices for lessons, suggesting that teachers utilize the many websites that are not commonly blocked by school filters and recognize texting and tweeting as modern-day vehicles for student writing. (T.H.E. Journal)

Duncan: Next round of Race to the Top to target school districts: Education Secretary Arne Duncan is planning the next round of the federal Race to the Top grant competition, which, he says, will offer funding directly to school districts. For fiscal year 2012, Congress has allocated $550 million for Race to the Top, which could be particularly useful for school districts in states that have not been successful in previous grant competitions, Duncan says. (Politics K-12)

Ideas for teaching students about income inequality: The writers of this blog post suggest a lesson in which students learn about income and wealth distribution in the U.S. and what that inequality means for society. To begin, students should fill out a socioeconomic survey and review related resources. Then, students can be divided into groups of two to make and support societal arguments. (The Learning Network blog)

How drawing on students' prior knowledge can enhance a lesson: Former teacher and instructional coach Elena Aguilar describes a writing lesson on heroes in which second-grade students defined their version of the word and listed heroes in their lives. Though the lesson veered away from Aguilar's original plan, it prompted a celebration honoring family and community heroes and plans for a classroom-authored book, all of which provided a more authentic learning experience for the students, she writes. (Elena Aguilar's blog)

6 design elements of a successful high-tech classroom: Successful 21st century classrooms are not just filled with technology, but designed to maximize the benefits of technology on student learning. Key elements of such classrooms include furniture designed and arranged to support collaboration, enough electrical outlets to provide adequate power supply to charge students' and teachers' devices and a "smart" teacher lectern equipped with USB ports and other features. (T.H.E. Journal)

Department of Education seeks feedback on cheating scandals: Following reports of cheating on standardized tests at schools nationwide, the federal Department of Education is taking steps to address the problem. The department hopes to publish a list of best practices -- compiled through public feedback -- used to "prevent, detect, and respond to irregularities in academic testing." At issue, according to this blog, is the pressure to perform well on high-stakes standardized tests. (The Answer Sheet blog)

This from ASCD:

What is your professional role, and where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?

I am an administrator/central office staff and see myself leaving education in the next five years.	19.25%
I am a classroom teacher and see myself in the same role in five years.	18.72%
I am a classroom teacher and see myself leaving education in the next five years.	15.33%
I am an administrator/central office staff and see myself in a higher-level administration position in the next five years.	14.35%
None of the above.	12.12%
I am an administrator/central office staff and see myself in the same role in five years.	10.87%
I am a classroom teacher and see myself becoming an administrator in the next five years.	9.36%

Four kinds of heretics attacking the gospel of education

2012-01-24T14:40:00.002-05:00

This from LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS:

Education is as close to a secular religion as we have in the United States. In a time when Americans have lost faith in their government and economic institutions, millions of us still believe in its saving grace. National leaders, from Benjamin Rush on, oversaw plans for extending its benefits more broadly. In the 19th century, the industrialist Andrew Carnegie famously conceived of schools as ladders on which the industrious poor would ascend to a better life, and he spent a good bit of his fortune laying the foundations for such an education society. After World War II, policy makers who believed in the education gospel grew numerous enough to fill stadiums. One by one, the G.I. Bill, the Truman Commission report, and the War on Poverty singled out education as the way of national and personal advance. “The answer to all of our national problems,” as Lyndon Johnson put it in 1965, “comes down to one single word: education.”

The American education gospel is built around four core beliefs.
First, it teaches that access to higher levels of education should be available to everyone, regardless of their background or previous academic performance. Every educational sinner should have a path to redemption. (Most of these paths now run through community colleges.)
Second, the gospel teaches that opportunity for a better life is the goal of everyone and that education is the primary — and perhaps the only — road to opportunity.
Third, it teaches that the country can solve its social problems — drugs, crime, poverty, and the rest — by providing more education to the poor. Education instills the knowledge, discipline, and the habits of life that lead to personal renewal and social mobility.
And, finally, it teaches that higher levels of education for all will reduce social inequalities, as they will put everyone on a more equal footing. No wonder President Obama and Bill Gates want the country to double its college graduation rate over the next 10 years.

The advance of the education gospel has been shadowed from the beginning by critics who claim that education, despite our best efforts, remains a bastion of privilege. For these critics, it is not that the educational gospel is wrong (a truly democratic, meritocratic school system would, if it existed, be a good thing); it is that the benefits of education have not yet spread evenly to every corner of American society, and that the trend toward educational equality may be heading in the wrong direction. They decry the fact that schools in poor communities have become dropout factories and that only the wealthy can afford the private preparatory schools that are the primary feeders to prestigious private colleges. The higher education Establishment recognizes critics like these as family. They accept the core beliefs of the education gospel and are impatient only with its slow and incomplete adoption...

~

Other heresies are more radical, and thus more disturbing to settled beliefs about the power of education. One currently growing in popularity we might call “the new restrictionism.” According to the new restrictionists, such as the economists Philip Babcock and Mindy Marks, co-authors of the 2008 paper “Leisure College USA: The Decline in Student Study Time,” access to higher education may have gone too far. Our colleges and universities are full to the brim with students who do not really belong there, who are unprepared for college and uninterested in breaking a mental sweat. Instead of studying, they spend time talking on the phone, planning social events, chitchatting about personal trivia and popular culture, and facebooking. Faculty members demand less of these students, according to Babcock and Marks, both because they are incapable of doing more and because they will punish faculty members with bad evaluations if they are pushed to try harder. The students often consider courses that require concentration “boring” and “irrelevant.” They argue and wheedle their way into grades they do not deserve. The colleges, out of craven financial motives, do not squarely face the fact that not all of their students are “college material.” Worse, they cater to ill-prepared and under-motivated students, dumbing down the curriculum to the point where a college degree is worth less, in terms of educational quality, than a degree from one of the better high schools. Institutions at the tail end of academic procession are, as David Riesman once put it, “colleges only by the grace of semantic generosity.”

In previous generations, critics of access for all were found mainly among the upper classes, who found the working classes unsuitable companions in learning. Hard-driving working-class kids were not the sort of people with whom one wanted to associate, and they lacked the cultivation to appreciate what the best education had to offer. This is the world of William F. Buckley’s God and Man at Yale. Today’s restrictionists are not snobs but staunch meritocrats: people who made their way through the schooling system, and who believe in it. They are dismayed by what the system has become in an age they see as one of near-universal access.

Furthermore, where the old restrictionists merely wanted to keep the working classes out, new restrictionists argue that colleges are not providing what poorly prepared students need to succeed...

Another heresy, and a very old one, is the idea that schooling provides education for servitude rather than freedom. It crushes the spirit, rather than expanding it. It is easy to see the elements of truth in this critique: Schools do line students up in rows, make them raise their hands, set them on task after evaluated task, insist on discipline in the classroom, and reward the motivated conformists. The “free the students” heresy goes back at least to Rousseau; though popular among Romantics of all eras, it had a major resurgence in the 1960s, when Paul Goodman, John Holt, and Ivan Illich carried the “free the students” flag. For them, children are born creative and curious, only to have the schools drum out these natural dispositions in order to create good soldiers for “the system.”...

John Marsh is a proponent of another old heretical sect: the “fool’s gold” group. These heretics specialize in debunking the social progress beliefs of the educational gospel. Although education does indeed lead to social mobility for some, Marsh argues, it cannot do so for most. For the working classes, a much better approach, he believes, would be to attack the proximate sources of inequality: tax laws that privilege the rich and labor laws that restrict the rights of unions and set the minimum wage below a decent living standard. “Given the political will,” he writes, “whether through redistributive tax rates, massive public works projects, a living wage law, or a renaissance of labor unions, we could decrease poverty and inequality tomorrow regardless of … the number of educated and uneducated workers.” Left to its own devices, he argues, expansion of the educational system will produce not social equality but credential inflation: the condition in which higher levels of education (or distinctive brands of education) are necessary to “buy” standards of living previously associated with lower levels (or generic brands) of education. As workers attain the bachelor’s degree, middle-class incomes become associated with the attainment of master’s or first professional degrees, and access to truly powerful opportunities requires attendance at an elite institution...

Finally, there is the “true educators” sect, to which University of Chicago professor of education Philip W. Jackson belongs. This group takes the standpoint of the Platonic form of education to inspire deeper appreciation of craft and, at least indirectly, to hold up a mirror to the deficiencies of our current system of schooling. For these heretics, upward mobility is beside the point; to dwell on such sociological factors is to neglect the true nature of education. What does “true education” look like? Drawing on Hegel, Kant, and Dewey, Jackson has an answer.

Jackson distinguishes between mimetic and transformative education. Mimetic education “gives a central place to the transmission of factual and procedural knowledge from one person to another, through an essentially imitative process.” By contrast, transformative education seeks to accomplish a “qualitative change … a metamorphosis” and particularly addresses “all those traits of character and of personality most highly prized by the society at large.” Mimetic education, in other words, imparts knowledge; transformative education does so as well but, more importantly, it changes people. Transformative education is an enterprise in which the spirit of wanting to know is also cultivated...

Texas School Drops Athletics To Save District

2012-01-24T14:33:00.000-05:00

This from the Huffington Post

In a desperate effort to boost student performance and save a school system from closure, one Texas school district has made the mid-year decision to eliminate its athletic programs -- in a state where sports are a highly coveted pastime.

The Premont Independent School District in South Texas lost accreditation last year after it had failed to meet adequate yearly progress requirements since 2007 under the federal No Child Left Behind law. Premont ISD was slated to close by this July, but the closure has been suspended to allow the district more time to turn around its student performance and attendance rates.

"A Not Accredited-Revoked status means that the Texas Education Agency no longer recognizes the district as a Texas public school," according to the Houston Elementary Education Examiner.

Threats to closure have already sent many packing, and others are looking to leave the district. Enrollment has fallen to 570 students this year, from 800 five years ago, the Associated Press reports. About 100 students take part in school athletics.

Now, schools Superintendent Ernest Singleton is looking to go door-to-door for truant students, seeking to raise the district's 88 percent attendance rate. The Texas average is 96 percent, according to AP. Student athletics will be suspended at least until next spring.

By cutting sports, Singleton seeks to increase study time for students and save $150,000 over two semesters, to be reinvested into bringing in highly qualified teachers and install two new science labs by August.

Parents and critics are worried that the elimination of athletics will decrease students' opportunities for physical activity and increase chances for bad behavior. Some say that the loss of sports could further demotivate students to go to school, and do well.

The Texas Education Agency, charged with school accreditation, can suspend Singleton's experiment at the agency's discretion if the district is not making sufficient progress.

"The hole is so deep it's going to be very hard for them to dig out of it," TEA spokesperson Debbie Graves Ratcliffe told AP.

Overall, Texas' education policies and curriculum have seen mixed reviews. A report in the fall by University of Texas at El Paso professor Keith Erekson said the state's K-12 standards in history are inadequate, ineffective and "fail to meet the state's college readiness standards."...

Summit Makes a Case for Teaching Handwriting

2012-01-24T14:28:00.000-05:00

This from Education Week:

Handwriting still has a place in the digital age, its proponents say, and they hoped that what they billed as a "summit" on the subject this week would spotlight their case for the enduring value of handwriting in the learning process.

The Washington conference was designed to draw together research from psychology, occupational therapy, education, and neuroscience to demonstrate handwriting's role in students' physical and cognitive development, states' learning standards, and the classroom.

The occasion also marked National Handwriting Day, Jan. 23—the birthday of that most famous exemplar of penmanship, John Hancock.

Doubt about the continued worth of handwriting skill is "similar to what happened with math as calculators and computers came into vogue," said Daniel A. Domenech, the executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, which co-sponsored the gathering with Zaner-Bloser, a Columbus, Ohio, company that produces a handwriting curriculum. "People wondered whether students needed to learn how to do math. The answer in both cases is absolutely yes. Writing is not obsolete."

Proponents of teaching—in some cases, reintroducing—handwriting in the school curriculum say their concern over the fading importance of handwriting became more urgent with the advent of the Common Core State Standards. The standards, which were released in 2010 and have been adopted by all but four states, mention keyboarding but not handwriting.

"The conversation about handwriting instruction has been growing," said Kathleen Wright, the coordinator of this week's event and the national product coordinator at Zaner-Bloser.

The company advocates that states supplement the common core with handwriting standards, as Massachusetts and California have already done. Ms. Wright said the conference, called the "Handwriting in the 21st Century?: An Educational Summit," was timed so policymakers could address any lack of attention to handwriting while their states are still rolling out their own versions of the common core...

Harlan independent, county schools reach agreement on who goes where

2012-01-24T14:25:00.000-05:00

This from WYMT (video):

Board members from both school systems reached a three year reciprocal agreement that will allow some students from the county to attend city schools if they choose.

“Our contract for non-resident students to attend our school district expired last June,” said Joe Meadors, the Harlan Independent School Board Chairman.

A fluctuating number was chosen that both districts are comfortable with.

“Basically every year that number will decrease from the 275 the first year to the 250 to the 225 for the non resident students,” said Gary Farmer, the Harlan County Board Chairman.

A yearly number had to be chosen because that dictates where state funding for the student will end up. If it is left unclaimed, it goes back to Frankfort. Those numbers do not include employees' students.

“Anybody that works in either district, their children can attend that school free of charge whether they are resident or non resident and the schools still get full funding,” said Meadors.

Meadors said that there were also siblings of some of those students who were “grandfathered in.”

Board members said that they had to meet in the middle, but they were glad to negotiate among themselves.

“This is a Harlan County issue that we needed to solve locally,” said Meadors.
“We did not need the state commissioner nor the state board of education to rule on this.”

Both agreed that the current economic status is weighing parents’ decisions enough.

“It is not something we both wanted, but it is something that we both compromised and both districts can live with,” said Farmer....

Searching for Resources to Teach the Common Standards

2012-01-24T14:18:00.000-05:00

This from Curriculum Matters:

If yearning had a sound, the air would be full of noise right now. That's because teachers across the country are looking for help in teaching the common-core state standards.

We heard this message loud and clear in August, when we hosted a webinar on the common standards. The biggest vein of questions pouring in during the Q&A period could be summed up this way: "Help! Where can I find resources to help me teach these new standards?"

Immediately, we felt their pain. We looked around on the Web to see what kinds of help was out there for teachers, and it wasn't easy to find, at least in any centralized kind of way. (See our blog post here.)

That isn't really a surprise, since each state and district is grappling with the issue its own way. The two consortia of states that are developing assessments for the common core have instructional resources planned, but most of them aren't available yet. The groups that organized or advocated for the common core have a few things out there. (Consider this resource list from the Council of Chief State School Officers, which includes links to a math curricular analysis tool, sample instructional English/language arts units, and some other information sources.) But either the pickings are still a bit thin, or folks just can't locate them easily, or both...

Value-added evaluation of teachers - yet more problems

2012-01-24T14:14:00.000-05:00

This from the Daily Kos:

The default assumption in the value-added literature
is that teacher effects are a fixed construct that is
independent of the context of teaching (e.g., types of
courses, student demographic compositions in a class,
and so on) and stable across time. Our empirical exploration
of teacher effectiveness rankings across different courses
and years suggested that this assumption
is not consistent with reality.
In particular, the fact that an individual student’s
learning gain is heavily dependent upon who else is
in his or her class, apart from the teacher,
raises questions about our ability to isolate a
teacher’s effect on an individual student’s learning,
no matter how sophisticated the statistical model might be.

Those words are from a new study on the stability of teachers scores using Value-Added methodologies toascertain teachers effects upon students scores on tests.

The study in question, titled Value-Added Modeling of Teacher Effectiveness: An Exploration of Stability across Models and Contexts, was released late last month at Education Policy Analysis Archives, a peer-reviewed online journal of education policy previously edited by our own SDorn, Sherman Dorn of the University of South Florida (disclosure - and like me an alumnus of Haverford College), who is still on the editorial board. Two of the four authors of this study, Edward Haertel and Linda Darling-Hammond, are also among the authors of the EPI policy brief.

Abstract:

Recent policy interest in tying student learning to teacher evaluation has led to growing use of value-added methods for assessing student learning gains linked to individual teachers. VAM analyses rely on complex assumptions about the roles of schools, multiple teachers, student aptitudes and efforts, homes and families in producing measured student learning gains. This article reports on analyses that examine the stability of high school teacher effectiveness rankings across differing conditions. We find that judgments of teacher effectiveness for a given teacher can vary substantially across statistical models, classes taught, and years. Furthermore, student characteristics can impact teacher rankings, sometimes dramatically, even when such characteristics have been previously controlled statistically in the value-added model. A teacher who teaches less advantaged students in a given course or year typically receives lower effectiveness ratings than the same teacher teaching more advantaged students in a different course or year. Models that fail to take student demographics into account further disadvantage teachers serving large numbers of low-income, limited English proficient, or lower-tracked students. We examine a number of potential reasons for these findings, and we conclude that caution should be exercised in using student achievement gains and value-added methods to assess teachers’ effectiveness, especially when the stakes are high.

In other words:

We find that judgments of teacher effectiveness for a given teacher can vary substantially across statistical models, classes taught, and years. The key words are vary substantially - if we are talking about something that is basic, it should not vary that much because of the particular value-added methodology being used. For point of comparison, where I do measure you by yardstick, tape measure, using at one time inches and another centimeters, if I am really measuring the same thing (height) I would get consistent results (which perhaps some slight variation due to measurement error).

But the method of measuring is only one problem. If there are different results because of classes taught, that MAY be because of different levels of effectiveness in different curricula, or it could be something else. And if there is substantial variance from year to year, either the teacher is very inconsistent (which does not seem all that likely) or that variance is due to something not under control of the teacher.

Furthermore, student characteristics can impact teacher rankings, sometimes dramatically, even when such characteristics have been previously controlled statistically in the value-added model. - this is CRITICAL. People have justifiably argued that using the single score at the end of a year tells us little about what the teacher has done, and may be primarily due to knowledge with which students arrived. Value-added analysis is supposed to provide a method that allows us to control for different characteristics among students, and thus enable use to focus in on what impact the teachers actually had. But if despite our attempts to control for variance among students, that variance still seriously impacts the derived value-added score, then relying upon value-added approaches is dangerous, because we will be making decisions that cannot be justified by the data we are using...

A Conversation With Arne Duncan

2012-01-24T14:05:00.000-05:00

This from Politics K-12:

Michele McNeil sat down with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently for a wide-ranging interview on the hot education topics of the day: waivers, Race to the Top, reauthorization, and the election. If you want more than just the highlights, check out the full transcript.

On Waivers
Q. The first waiver announcement is expected soon from your department. You've talked about how this is not a competition, and so you want all states that want to, and can commit to certain things, to get a waiver under No Child Left Behind. But you also say you want to keep a high bar. How do you do both?

A. I think the first goal is clearly more important, to have a high bar. The goal is not to just give a waiver to everyone. ... We're going to go back and forth with states and say this looks great, you've got a challenge here, think about it in different ways. Again, no hard deadlines. This creates an opportunity for those who want it.

Q. People have been clamoring for the ability to measure growth. In reading the first 11 waiver applications, it's clear growth is a huge part of these new accountability systems. Are you worried that there will be so much emphasis on growth that you lose this desire to still get kids to a certain level of proficiency?

A. I think all of these are false choices. The only way you ever hit a high bar is by better growth. So it's growth to what? ... I think some of these accountability systems will be more complex, there will be more factors, but I think it will be such a more fine-tuned system. And not that it's going to be perfect. ... So, yeah, the growth is important to me. But look at graduation rates. Look at dropout rates. Look at our kids going to college. ... And so I think you're going to see a level of sophistication that just didn't exist 10 years ago, and we want to look at a range of factors. ...

Union Bashing in Favor of an Improbable Solution

2012-01-24T14:01:00.000-05:00

This from WFPL:

While Rallying for Charter Schools,

Supporters Ask Unions to Stand Aside

Advocates for charter schools in Kentucky took their cause to Frankfort today.

A handful of organizations support charter schools. One of the most vocal has been the Black Alliance for Educational Opportunities or BAEO. Its national president, Kenneth Campbell, helped lead the rally for charter schools at the Capitol. And he told the crowd Kentucky’s education system doesn’t serve all students equally.

“You know children and families in Kentucky are in crisis, as they are in a lot of places across this country,” Campbell said. “And the one tool we have for turning this whole thing around is education. And it doesn’t work for too many of our children. So what we want is for the political leaders of Kentucky to take a stand on behalf of children.

Many lawmakers were on hand for the rally, which came after a march around the Capitol. Former Louisville mayoral candidate Hal Heiner—who chairs a group running ads in support of charter schools—spoke to a crowded Rotunda audience. So did state Rep. Brad Montell, who has repeatedly filed legislation to legalize charter schools.

Supporters of the legislation are telling opponents—largely teachers’ unions—to get out the way.

“Again I think the only thing that holds it up are people who are supporting institutions more than children and families,” said Campbell. “People who are supporting adult issues and their organized interest versus the interests of children. At the end of the day nobody can look at our performance and say that what we have right now is working for all kids. And if it’s not then we need to talk about being bold and taking action.”

House Speaker Greg Stumbo has signaled an openness to charter school legislation this session. And House Education Chairman Carl Rollins says he may allow a bill to be voted on in his committee.

But opponents of charter schools say education improvement isn’t a certainty with charters. They point to mismanagement of charter schools in other states, lackluster improvement and the draining of funds from other public schools as reasons not to support charters.

Are High Schools Preparing College-Ready Students?

2012-01-23T14:56:00.000-05:00

There is a lot of interest in college-readiness these days from education policy types. They argue persuasively of the need for a substantial percentage of Americans to hold advanced degrees - if we are to maintain our economic position in the world.

Are high schools preparing college-ready students?

Each semester I ask my 150 students (college sophomores and juniors mostly; 21+ ACTs, so we're talking top third of high school grads) to briefly reflect on their own high school experiences writing on the topic - "Ready (or not) for College: How my high school (and I) prepared me for college."

As one might imagine, their opinions are very mixed. Assessing their own contribution to their education along side those of their high schools, my students report stories of great teaching and great apathy from the various faculties in the state. They are industrious. They are slackers. About half of them got a rude awakening on campus.

Many brag about their high schools and remember their toughest teachers as the ones who readied them. Others tell stories of how high school is one great big negotiation with teachers. No assignment is late, no grade is final, until the teacher surrenders and "gives" the student the grade they want. After basketball and football, it may well be the most popular sport in school. One gets the distinct impression that during high school, such rubber-spined enablers are among the students' favorites. Later on, they are derided for their permissiveness.

This is also a pretty good illustration of why student opinion of teaching should only be given a small part in any teacher evaluation. Focusing too much on student opinion is inappropriate as a goal since it will ultimately lower the standards of teachers who are trying to earn points with their students. "Ya need more time for that month-old assignment? No problem."

Here's one student's reflection on her highly-regarded high school.

This from Sarah (with permission):

My high school did not prepare me for college. Yes, it had state of the art equipment and had much money put into its development, but that does not mean that it will educate it students.

Many of the teacher’s were not concerned about the education of the students. Every subject and lesson was taught based on what was on the test. After the test, there was no real teaching.

I do remember having a few really good teachers who were very interactive and truly valued the learning process. Though these particular teachers were tough in their testing and grading, they actually taught me something of value.

Teaching to the test does not always have to be a bad thing. However, it does nothing good for students if you merely put things into their brain, like you throw trash into a garbage can, so it is there for them to dig through if they need to. Then, the test comes around, just like a trash truck, and takes all of that knowledge from you because, in a students mind, they will never need it again. And so, the information for the test has been taken away from the student forever.

This is how my high school worked. And, for the most part, everyone was okay with this method. I learned nothing from this system because my parents raised me to be critical thinker. When I was told something in school, I not only remembered it, but I thought about what it meant and made connections to other things I had learned.

I did most of my own preparation for college. I took ACT preparation classes and bought many ACT preparation books to get the best information on how to prepare. If there were any content, such as pre-calculus, that I did not understand, I would go and seek out the answers. There was not someone standing beside me telling me all of the right answers; I had to seek them for myself.

While in my senior year of high school, I decided to actually attend college classes instead of taking all of my classes at my school. I learned more in two semesters than I had throughout all of high school. The coursework was rigorous and complicated, but I set a goal and worked extremely hard to excel in everything that I did.

While most people were hanging out with their friends and going out to different places, I did all of my homework, studied, and spent time with my friends if there was time left over. Taking a full college course load while in high school is not easy, but it is manageable.

In the end, though my high school did not appear to prepare me well for college, I am glad that I had my high school experience there. If I had gone to another high school, I may not have learned the necessity of critical thinking or the difference between a good teacher and a not-as-good teacher. I also would have never known how much more difficult college really is.

Though I may have prepared myself better for college on my own, high school prepared me for the real world where you must seek out the knowledge and answers you truly want on your own.

State now bearing cost of poor tax policy

2012-01-23T12:50:00.000-05:00

This from the Herald-Leader:

With interest rates at historic lows, this is an opportune time for universities to tackle a backlog of maintenance and building needs.

Except Kentucky cannot afford to issue bonds to protect taxpayers' investments in the state's campuses. Kentucky cannot afford to take advantage of any opportunities and is barely carrying out some of its basic obligations to protect the public.

Gov. Steve Beshear described the budget that he proposed last week as "inadequate," which is an understatement. Instead of investing for the future, Kentucky will be making more cuts.

As the economy picks up, it hurts to think about how much better positioned the state would be to capitalize on the upturn if a succession of governors and legislatures had not ducked tax reform.

Twenty years ago, the late Gov. Wallace Wilkinson called for broadening the tax base by taxing services. Numerous studies have highlighted exemptions and loopholes that should be closed. It still hasn't happened.

At the beginning of his second and last term, Beshear is launching a tax reform effort that could have proposals ready for a special legislative session late this year.

If this budget doesn't sell Kentuckians on tax reform, nothing will...

Teen moms clueless about how they got pregnant

2012-01-21T06:11:00.000-05:00

This from TeenTribune:

A new government study suggests a lot of teenage girls are clueless about their chances of getting pregnant.

In a survey of thousands of teenage mothers who had unintended pregnancies, about a third who didn't use birth control said the reason was they didn't believe they could pregnant.

Why they thought that isn't clear. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey didn't ask teens to explain.

But other researchers have talked to teen moms who believed they couldn't get pregnant the first time they had sex, didn't think they could get pregnant at that time of the month or thought they were sterile.

"This report underscores how much misperception, ambivalence and magical thinking put teens at risk for unintended pregnancy," said Bill Albert, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

Other studies have asked teens about their contraception use and beliefs about pregnancy. But the CDC report released Thursday is the first to focus on teens who didn't want to get pregnant but did.

The researchers interviewed nearly 5,000 teenage girls in 19 states who gave birth after unplanned pregnancies in 2004 through 2008. The survey was done through mailed questionnaires with telephone follow-up.

About half of the girls in the survey said they were not using any birth control when they got pregnant. That's higher than surveys of teens in general, which have found that fewer than 20 percent said they didn't use contraception the last time they had sex...

Is It Fair to Use Erasure Analysis to Expose Erasure Parties ?

2012-01-19T20:40:00.000-05:00

One former Atlanta Area Superintendent doesn't think so

Former Superintendent Wilson: "I have a decision to make

based on how we finish this conversation

and where I go from here.

And remember, I'm the old guy.

I have nothing to lose.

I really want to be part of helping make this good.

But I can go wherever I need to go."

State Investigator Mathers: "What do you mean by that?"

Wilson: "I'm not going to give you any threats.

But let me tell you, I can get there."

One can only be thankful that he didn't threaten her or use "Gestapo tactics."

This from WTSB-TV Atlanta:
James Wilson, a well-known former superintendent in Greater Atlanta's Cobb and Fulton County school systems, was caught on tape bullying and threatening a state education official during that state's investigation of wide-spread cheating on state exams.

The issue was Georgia's use of "erasure analysis" to spot cheaters (many of whom later admitted to attending "erasure parties"). It was erasure analysis that revealed test administration anomolies suggestive of misconduct in Atlanta and Dougherty County schools. Wilson had been hired to defend the county schools and was caught on tape threatening the career of the governor's lead official looking into the scandal. He suggested she would "pay dearly" if she couldn't make things right. The message sounded a lot like back off, or else.

2012-01-19T08:03:00.000-05:00

This from Dan Rather:

In just 30 years, Finland transformed its school system from one that was mediocre and inequitable, to one that consistently produces some of the world's best students, while virtually eliminating an achievement gap. And they do it without standardized testing.. Dan Rather Reports.

C-J Editorial: Charter school mirage

2012-01-19T07:48:00.000-05:00

This from the Courier-Journal:

Like an unwelcome relative at family gatherings, the push for charter schools has returned to Kentucky.

Politically, it needs to be taken seriously. Charter schools have had support in the past in the state Senate, and Senate President David Williams supported them during his unsuccessful Republican campaign for governor last year. Previous bids to authorize charter schools have died in the House, but there are some high-stakes issues confronting the General Assembly — expanded gambling, tax reform, a bid to create a state university in Pikeville, painful budget cuts — that could prompt game-changing bargains. Gov. Steve Beshear, who has seemed open to charter schools, can’t be counted on as a last line of defense.

But charter schools should not be approached as a political matter — or even as a financial one. (Some education officials and advocates argue that Kentucky must create charter schools in order to win Race to the Top federal dollars, but that actually is not a requirement.)

Charter schools are offered as an educational remedy. They are chartered by states, receive public money (and often funds from private foundations) and are technically public schools that cannot charge tuition and must offer open enrollment on a space available basis. But they are largely organized outside the daily operational control of state and local officials. In return, they agree to be held accountable for meeting results specified in the charter.

That has sounded good to some parents in other states, but the single most important consideration is that charter schools overall do not do as well as traditional public schools — even though charter schools generally can boot out children who don’t perform well.

A national assessment of charter schools in 2009 by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University found that only 17 percent of charter schools reported academic gains that were notably superior to those of traditional public schools, 37 percent showed gains that were worse, and 46 percent of charter schools showed no significant difference.

Moreover, they are simply not needed in Kentucky. Like charter schools, site-based management councils, under the KERA education reform, can make decisions for each school that supersede a school board’s authority. For all the hand-wringing, public schools in Jefferson County and statewide have been making significant progress in national rankings without charter schools.

And, at a time of cutbacks, this is no time to divert money from public schools.

Nationally, the charter school movement often has an anti-union ideological component. But in Kentucky, that would be creating a clash with unionized teachers that doesn’t exist now. Jefferson County teachers, to take one example, have agreed to modify significant traditional seniority-based processes on teacher assignments, particularly at persistently low-achieving schools.

Everyone wants to make Kentucky’s schools better. Charter schools are the wrong way to do it.

Justices Decline to Weigh Prayers at School Board Meetings

2012-01-17T19:54:00.000-05:00

This from the School Law Blog: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/school_law/2012/01

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to take up the issue of prayers at school board meetings.

The justices declined to hear the appeal of a school board in Delaware, which had its practice of reciting prayers before its public board meetings struck down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, in Philadelphia.

Prayers before school board meetings are commonplace in the United States, though certainly not universal.

The Delaware case involved the 8,400-student Indian River school district, which has had prayers at its board meetings since its founding in 1969, court papers say. In 2004, the district formalized its board meeting prayer policy, which calls for board members to rotate in leading a prayer or moment of silence to "solemnify" formal meetings. The policy says prayers may be sectarian or non-sectarian, "in the name of a Supreme Being, Jehovah, Jesus Christ, Buddha, Allah," or any other entity.

Court papers say that, in practice, prayers have almost always been Christian.

Two families challenged the board prayers as a violation of the First Amendment's prohibition against government establishment of religion. A federal district court upheld the practice. But in its Aug. 5 decision, the 3rd Circuit court panel said the board's policy and practices cannot be squared with the establishment clause.

The 3rd Circuit court said the key question was whether the school board's meetings and prayers were closer to the legislative prayers upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1983 case of Marsh v. Chambers, or more like other school events in which the high court's cases have limited school-sponsored prayers.

Winters Credits Winters for State Leap in Quality Counts

2012-01-17T19:47:00.000-05:00

Now Will the Legislature Fund SB1?

This from the Murray Ledger:

First District Sen. Ken Winters says he is thrilled that Kentucky has risen to 14th in the nation for work on academic standards, the teaching profession and many other variables in public education.

The newly-released rankings in “Education Week,” a national publication that focuses on P-12 education, last year ranked Kentucky 34th in reports tracking key education indicators that grade states on policy efforts to improve education in the primary and secondary level in an article titled, “Quality Counts,” according to a news release from Gov. Steve Beshear’s office.

Beshear said Kentucky can take pride in the standings.

“Kentucky continues to show measureable progress in education, and the rankings provided in ‘Quality Counts’ recognize the hard work of teachers, administrators, parents and community members,” Beshear said.

The Kentucky General Assembly’s approval of Senate Bill 1 in 2009, spearheaded by Winters and some of his colleagues, was particularly cited as part of the reason for the new ranking. Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday said much of the impetus for the ranking is due to Senate Bill 1.

“That legislation set us on a course to become a leader nationwide, and with the support of Gov. Beshear, legislators, teachers, administrators and parents, Kentucky’s work in school accountability, teacher training, college/career readiness and stronger academic standards is moving us in the right direction,” Holliday said.

Winters, R-Murray, said he was happy to play his part in the most important change in Kentucky since the Kentucky Education Reform Act in the 1990s.

“I am very excited about the movement on the national scene about how people perceive our educational program in Kentucky,” Winters said late last week. “I noticed the commissioner gave credit to Senate Bill 1 which I was the principal sponsor of in 2009. If you look at the statistical scores on the items that really bring us to the forefront its the standards, assessment and accountability. That’s the whole basis for Senate Bill 1. A lot of people recognize that as something substantial, and I rejoice along with the department of education and all of the general assembly that had a role in passing that bill.”

Category: Stupid Policies That Make Public Schools Look Bad

2012-01-17T19:36:00.000-05:00

This from WTSP News, Tampa Bay:

A mother plans to change policies at a Brevard County public school after her son was suspended for a hug.
When Nick Martinez, 14, received his suspension for a public display of affection at Southwest Middle School in Palm Bay, his mom wanted to know why.
"I wanted to know if he had touched her inappropriately? Did she report it? Did she say anything about it? It was a mutual hug," said Nancy Crescente, the boy's mother.

Nick said he quickly hugged the girl, who he called his best friend, between classes. The principal saw it and hauled them off to the dean for an in-school suspension. Even the principal told WKMG Local 6 that the hug was innocent.
Crescente said she was livid after both students were punished.

"First of all, we are a Hispanic cultural family and hugging is part of who we are," she said.

The school has a strict no hugging policy and is the only school in the district where hugging is not allowed. Under the policy, there is no difference between an unwanted hug, like sexual harassment, and a hug between friends.

"A lot of friends are hugging. I just happened to be the one caught doing it," said Martinez.

"Honestly, I didn't know because I didn't think hugging was a bad thing. I didn't know you could get suspended for it," he added.

Hat tip to Justin: Hugging and Other Crimes Against Humanity

Why Kentucky School Funding Is A Huge Concern

2012-01-17T19:27:00.000-05:00

For This Year And The Future

This from the Prichard Blog:

Over at Prich, Susan has been putting some scale to the school funding shortfall. While in Frankfort there are no signs of hope.

For the past four years declines in state and local revenues for Kentucky schools were largely offset by federal dollars. That relief is now a thing of the past.

[W]e know that the trend for this year and beyond will be decline unless state leaders step up in the current legislative session. We also know those funding losses will pose a grave danger to Kentucky's bold commitment to ensure that all students graduate from high school with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in higher education and in the job markets of the future...

[L]ooking to the current year and the future, we know our schools are now working with a federal decline and a state increase that is nowhere near enough to make up those losses. We also have reason to worry about local funding. The newest report on state revenue says that July to December state property tax collections in 2011 dropped more than 9% from the 2010 level. If local tax receipts show a similar trend, the results could be disastrous. It's too early to know that will happen, but definitely time to be very concerned that it might.

Review Finds Studies of Charter Schools Flawed, Problematic

2012-01-13T16:49:00.000-05:00

This from State EdWatch:

Most studies of charter schools use unsophisticated methods and are flawed in ways that prevent researchers from accurately gauging those institutions' impact on student achievement, a new review concludes.

And while researchers have options for collecting more accurate information about charter school performance, they also face obstacles along the way—some of them related to the unwillingness among states and schools to provide crucial data, the analysis finds.

A meta-analysis of charter school studies revealed that about 75 percent of them do not meet rigorous research standards because they don't account for the differences in academic background and academic histories of students attending charters, when comparing them with those attending traditional public schools, according to the review, published in the renowned journal Science. Those studies typically fail to "disentangle school quality from the preexisting achievement level," or student self-selection of schools, the article says.

The article was written by Julian R. Betts, a professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego, and Richard C. Atkinson, a former president of the University of California system who also once served as director of the National Science Foundation.

High-quality research on charters is nonetheless beginning to emerge, they say. Much of it is coming from charters that have so many applicants that they must use lotteries for admission. Because getting in or not getting in is based on chance, the students who fail to secure a spot represent a sound "control" group necessary for a study, Betts and Atkinson say.

The relatively small number of lottery-based studies of charter schools have generally shown that they either outperform or perform at the same level as traditional public schools, according to the authors. But those studies cover only a small fraction—about 2 percent—of charter schools nationally.

Of course, many education advocates and scholars have long been frustrated by the paucity of rigorous research across the spectrum of school policy—not just with charters. (See my colleague Debbie Viadero's exceptional reporting on this.) The shortage of research is sometimes attributed to the difficulty of arranging high-quality, sustained studies of student populations in school settings...

Pro Charter Group meets with C-J Editors

2012-01-13T16:46:00.000-05:00

UK Prof Wayne Lewis tells C-J Editors
that poor kids are "sentenced" to bad schools

This from The Courier-Journal:

Former Louisville mayoral candidate Hal Heiner is leading a campaign to allow charter schools to be established in Kentucky.

Heiner has formed a nonprofit organization, Kentuckians Advocating Reform in Education, to push the General Assembly to allow for charter schools. Among its efforts is a $120,000 ad campaign on television and radio.

The former Metro Council member said his advocacy was born of concern about the Jefferson County Public School system’s dropout rate, as well as other education issues frequently raised when he ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 2010.

Charter schools take different forms in each state, but they typically are operated with public funds by groups independent of local school systems. They do not have to abide by the same regulations as public schools, allowing for more hours in the school day, more class days and greater flexibility in instruction...

A bill authorizing charter schools passed the state Senate last year, but the House has not taken up such proposals. Rep. Carl Rollins, a Midway Democrat and chairman of the House Education Committee, said that, while he opposes charter schools, he’s considering bringing a bill sponsored by Rep. Brad Montell, R-Shelbyville, to the committee this session.

“I think it dilutes our focus,” Rollins said of charter schools. “I know we need to improve a lot of our schools, but at the same time I don’t think competition — starting new schools from scratch to compete with our public schools — is the way to solve the problem.”

Rollins said he’s considering bringing the bill up because of the longstanding support for charter schools among legislative Republicans and the Obama administration, and he thinks it’s worth debating.

“It doesn’t hurt to have a discussion and talk about it,” he said...

Heiner said he prefers only nonprofit organizations being granted charters and for the schools to be targeted to high-poverty communities. Parents would have to apply for their children to attend the schools, and a lottery would determine who gets in if applications exceed available spots, he said.

Religious groups would not be eligible to apply for charters, Burgan said...

Heiner said he is KARE’s largest contributor, and the other members are “Kentucky individuals.” Asked for a list of donors, Heiner said he’d consult with them to see if they want their names to be made public...

Educators who cheat on tests could face criminal charges

2012-01-13T15:43:00.000-05:00

This from H-L:

The Senate Education Committee unanimously passed a bill to make it a crime for educators to cheat on any state tests. The measure now goes to the full Senate.

Senate Bill 64 would make it unlawful for educators to allow students to see test questions prior to the test, copy any test booklets, provide guidance or answer keys during the test, or correct student answers afterwards.

Any charges could be reported to a prosecuting attorney or the attorney general for investigation. Punishment would include fines of up to $1,000 and an investigation by the Education Professional Standards Board.

The bill comes in the wake of a cheating scandal in Perry County in 2010 on the ACT test. Recently, the standards board suspended the educational certificates of two employees implicated in the matter.

Cheating is already against state education rules, but there are no criminal charges attached.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/01/13/2025994/educators-who-cheat-on-tests-could.html#wgt=rcntnews#storylink=cpy

Standards board takes action against Perry county educators in ACT investigation

2012-01-13T15:30:00.003-05:00

This from the Hazard Herald:

The Education Professional Standards Board this week suspended educational certificates for two employees of the Perry County School District in response to an investigation that turned up allegedly compromised ACT tests in 2009 and 2010.

The ACT organization, which provides college entrance exams to high school students in Kentucky and other states, confirmed to the Herald in October 2010 that officials had cancelled test scores for several students at Perry County Central, and later at Buckhorn High School, after an investigation concluded that answers on some of the tests had been altered and did not reflect “the students’ own independent work.”

ACT forwarded the results of their investigation to the Kentucky Department of Education and the Education Professional Standards Board (EPSB), the latter of which opened cases on five employees of the district. Two of those cases were closed with a suspension of certification on Monday, January 9.

According to documents obtained by the Herald this week through an open records request, Jonathan Jett, who at the time served as the district’s assessment coordinator, was “responsible for test security in the district,” and “should have been aware that ACT scores for certain student groups appeared to be inconsistent with their abilities.”

An agreed order was issued during the EPSB’s meeting on Monday, noting punitive measures against Jett and his certification in Kentucky.

“Although Jett maintains his innocence with regard to the specific allegation,” the order reads, “he acknowledges that the evidence regarding the reported charges is such that, if presented at a hearing of this matter, could result in a finding that he is in violation of KRS 161-120 and 16 KAR 1:020, the Professional Code of Ethics for Kentucky School Certified Personnel.”

Two of the three educational certificates Jett holds were suspended as a part of the order. One listed as a “Professional Certificate For Instructional Leadership–School Superintendent” was suspended for 12 months beginning July 1, 2011 and ending July 1, 2012, while a “Professional Certificate For Director Of Special Education” was suspended for 18 months beginning July 1, 2011.

According to Alicia Sneed, director of legal services for the EPSB, Jett additionally holds a teaching certificate which will not be affected “since the allegations in the case were in reference to his positions as District Assessment Coordinator and Director of Special Education.”

Additional probationary conditions were also attached to the order, including one that bars Jett from supervising the administration of tests required by state statute or by the Kentucky Department of Education.

A second case was closed on Monday against Rebecca Dobson, a certified teacher at Perry Central who, according to the agreed order in her case, was serving as the testing accommodations coordinator at the time ACT alleged the tests were altered. The order also noted that her fingerprints were allegedly found on the answer sheets, according to the original complaint made by ACT.

Dobson also maintained her innocence, according to the documentation, but agreed to the order which suspends her teaching certification for a period of six months beginning September 3, 2011 and ending on February 3, 2012, after which her certificate will be reinstated under a probationary period of five years. Conditions of that probation include that Dobson provide proof that she completed 12 hours of ethics training and that she not be allowed to participate in any testing mandated by state law or by the Kentucky Department of Education.

Perry County Superintendent John Paul Amis noted on Wednesday that Jett’s suspension will not affect his current job as the district’s maintenance and transportation director, and that Dobson is currently on an unrelated leave and isn’t scheduled to return until next month.

He added that the suspensions levied by the EPSB were unfortunate because it appeared that both Jett and Dobson were punished simply by virtue of their supervisory positions, and that to his knowledge there has never been a specific allegation or evidence presented that either had anything to do with physically altering the test’s answer sheets.

“It’s my understanding the only reason the standards board has taken any action against any individuals is due to negligence, because of the positions they held, and not willful negligence, just negligence, that these people never willingly, knowingly participated in anything improper, but due to the positions that they held some disciplinary action was taken against them,” Amis said.

In Jett’s case, Amis noted, he was never in contact with the answer sheets at any time during their administration, and in Dobson’s case, it would be natural for someone administering the test to have their fingerprints on the booklets.

“I’m sure if they checked, there would be numerous fingerprints on them, because somebody has to hand them out and somebody has to take them up, and somebody has to inventory them and seal them up,” he said. “That wouldn’t be evidence of guilt on anybody’s part.”

Amis said he has reviewed the evidence contained in the ACT report several times, and while it does seem that some manipulation of the tests may have taken place, it has been frustrating that no one has been able to pinpoint any specific individual as the person who physically altered the students’ answers.

“When you look at the evidence of some of these answer sheets … the evidence is pretty compelling that some of those could have been manipulated,” he said. “But again, a lot of people don’t realize how in-depth ACT’s investigation was.”

That investigation, he noted, included forensic elements such as fingerprint and handwriting analysis. And despite that inquiry and another completed by district officials on the local level, “they could still never determine an individual who actually went in and changed any of the answers, (or) manipulated those answer sheets in any way.”

And that has been a point of frustration, he added. “We would have dealt with an individual severely if we could ever have determined exactly who it was.”

“It’s unfortunate,” Amis continued, “that you’ve got people that their names are now going to be made public and may be some action taken against them with their certifications when they’ve never been accused of actually doing anything improper.”

Three other cases are currently pending, the details of which are not being released. Alicia Sneed with the EPSB explained that those files will also become public record once the cases are closed. She did not note a time frame as to when that may happen.

Superintendent Amis also declined to release any specifics in those remaining cases, but said he understands that like the two that were closed this week, those individuals were named because of their positions and not because of any specific allegations or evidence against them.

In the original ACT complaint, tests were also alleged to have been compromised at the county’s other public high school at Buckhorn, though Sneed declined to comment if there are any plans to open separate investigations in regard to those allegations.

Amis did say, however, that he received a letter from ACT several months ago that the agency was not pursuing anything with Buckhorn, and that he doesn’t expect any further investigation into those allegations.

Few States Cite Full Plans for Carrying Out Standards

2012-01-13T15:19:00.000-05:00

This from Education Week:

Forty-six states and the District of Columbia have adopted a common set of academic standards, but only seven have fully developed plans to put the standards into practice in three key areas, according to a study released today.

The EPE Research Center, operated by Editorial Projects in Education, which publishes Education Week, teamed up with Education First, a Seattle-based education policy and consulting group, on a survey of states’ plans to implement the Common Core State Standards.

It found that “a handful of states are particularly far along” in their plans to transform the common standards into practice, but “most states ... still have a long way to go” before they have blueprints to take the standards from paper to practice.

“Whether the pace and quality of state planning efforts will be strong enough to ensure a smooth transition to the [standards] remains an open question,” the report says...

States that reported having plans in any of those areas were asked to characterize them as complete or in development.

[S]even states — Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, and West Virginia—said they had completed plans in all three of those areas, 18 reported no completed plans in any of them...

Infographic: Growth in educational management organizations shows no signs of slowing

2012-01-13T15:13:00.000-05:00

This from HechingerEd Blog:

Report cards for teachers: Are they fair?

2012-01-13T15:10:00.000-05:00

This from the HechingerEd Blog:

A new study underwritten by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (which is among the funders of The Hechinger Report) tackles the question of whether the new teacher evaluation systems going into effect in school districts across the country are accurate and reliable in identifying which teachers are good and which are not. The researchers found that the new evaluation systems are likely to be more reliable than the methods used in the past. But they are not perfect.

The study argues that current teacher evaluation systems are broken, suggesting, as many critics have in the past, that the problem with the old approach was its failure to distinguish among the great, the mediocre and the bad: More than 90 percent of teachers were labeled as satisfactory, even in school districts where student achievement and graduation rates were abysmal. Under the old system, principals usually conducted one classroom observation per teacher every few years, marking off things on a checklist, like whether students were behaving and goals were displayed on the chalkboard.

Advocates for a new system of measuring teachers—with usually more than one classroom observation a year, plus standardized test scores that measure how much a teacher’s students improve academically, plus other measures like student survey results—say it is more consistent and precise. This new system is being promoted as more dependable in telling districts which teachers are great, which need help to get better, and, most controversially, which need to be let go...

New National Standards Address Sexuality Education for All Grades

2012-01-13T15:03:00.000-05:00

This from Curriculum Matters:

A new set of standards outlines the minimum that students should learn about their sexuality from their earliest years in school until they leave high school.

The standards, developed over the last few years by dozens of health and education experts, say that by the end of 2nd grade, students should be able to use the proper name for body parts, including male and female anatomy. By the end of 5th grade, they should be able to define sexual abuse and harassment. By the end of high school, they should be able to describe common symptoms of and treatments for sexually transmitted diseases including HIV, according to the standards released today with the backing of four national health education groups.

Three groups—Advocates for Youth, Answer, and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States—led creation of the standards. At the time the project was conceived, the hope was that federal spending on abstinence-only sexual education would eventually be extinguished (which isn't yet the case ) and something would be needed to teach sexuality, comprehensively. Still, despite the federal government's continued support for abstinence-only sex education programs in schools, a growing number of states are opting to go beyond abstinence-only and take a more-comprehensive approach to sex education in public schools. For example, many Texas schools have shifted away from an abstinence-only approach.

A 2007 congressionally mandated study found no statistically significant beneficial effect on the sexual behavior of young people participating in abstinence-based programs...

Pa. Teachers Agree to Work for Free

2012-01-13T14:57:00.000-05:00

This from Teaching Now:

Teachers in Pennsylvania's Chester Upland School District have agreed to continue working even though the district can no longer afford to pay them, reports The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Chester Upland has been in turmoil for some time. Last summer, the state passed massive budget cuts that forced the district to decrease its operating budget by $18 million, according to the Delaware County Daily Times. The district laid off 40 percent of its professional staff and half of its unionized support staff, states the Inquirer, and in some schools, class sizes now average more than 40 students. The acting superintendent, Levi Wingard, was laid off as well on Dec. 31. In a letter posted on the district's website, Wingard writes:

We now face a very challenging financial crisis. We are currently unable to fund the district's payroll expenses after January 4, 2012. However, I assure you that the members of the school board and the district administration are doing everything possible to identify a solution. We are working cooperatively with the labor unions, the Delaware County Superintendents, the Delaware County Intermediate Unit and the Pennsylvania Department of Education...

Georgia School's 'Slavery' Math Problems Sparks Parent Protest, District Investigation

2012-01-13T14:50:00.000-05:00

This from the Huffington Post:

Dozens of parents and community members rallied outside a Norcross, Ga. elementary school Tuesday, calling on the school district to fire teachers involved in a 3rd grade math assignment that used slavery in examples.

Protesters chanted "Fire them now" and marched with signs outside Beaver Ridge Elementary School, WSBTV reports. Parents are outraged at both the assignment and the school district's response to the reports of those math problems, which included references to cotton, orange picking and beatings.

One problem reads: "If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in 1 week?"

"The teachers, the staff responsible for allowing this to go forward should be fired," Georgia NAACP President Ed DuBose told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

One of the affected classes has been taught by a substitute teacher for the last two days, pending investigations, according to the AJC. The teachers under investigation are not being identified.

District spokesperson Sloan Roach told WSBTV that one teacher wrote the questions, four of the nine 3rd grade teachers handed out the worksheets to a total of more than 100 students, but all nine educators saw the assignment. Beaver Ridge Principal Jose DeJesus is meeting and speaking with parents.

"One of them had to question this and say, 'Look, we cannot do this, we cannot let this go out ... let's make better questions,'" Beaver Ridge parent Christopher Braxton told WSBTV.

The district's initial response to parents earlier this week was simply that the elementary school's principal will "work with teachers to come up with more appropriate lessons." Roach said the math problems were written in an attempt to incorporate social studies lessons in math for a "cross-curricular activity" and that the teachers meant no harm.

Following parent outcry and national attention, Gwinnett Schools district officials are now investigating the incident to determine whether to pursue punitive action. Roach said the questions were inappropriate and the investigation would seek to ensure that teachers are creating assignments that are "appropriate and respective," ABC News reports. She declined to speculate on what action may be taken against guilty teachers or whether additional training would be required for educators.

"We are looking at what human resources actions may be taken so I do believe that is a hard stance trying to determine what does that situation warrant," Roach told WSBTV.

She tells ABC News that there doesn't appear to be signs of intentional "maliciousness" or racism, and the incident was simply a matter of a teacher writing some bad questions.

"This was an isolated case involving these teachers at this school and at this grade level," she said.

Popular Frameworks Found to Identify Effective Teachers

2012-01-13T14:44:00.000-05:00

This from Education Week:

Teachers who embodied the teaching skills outlined in certain popular teaching frameworks tended to help their students learn more, concludes a new study released by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The report is the second major release from the foundation’s Measures of Effective Teaching project, which seeks to identify the best gauges of effective teaching. Ultimately, the Seattle-based foundation plans to devise a prototype teacher-effectiveness measure based on the findings.

Among other implications, the study’s results suggest that observations of teaching practice hold promise for being integrated into teacher-evaluation systems—if observers are carefully trained to ensure consistent application of the frameworks over multiple observations. Also, the study indicates that the gauges that appear to make the most finely grained distinctions of teacher performance are those that incorporate many different types of information, not those that are exclusively based on test scores.

“I was surprised at how aligned all the measures were,” said Douglas O. Staiger, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, N.H., and one of the principal researchers on the study. “They seem to pick out teachers who are good on a range of dimensions, and I think that says there really is something kind of coherent about good teaching.” ...

Free trips not worth the price

2012-01-13T08:03:00.000-05:00

H-L Smacks Holliday and Young

Leaves out an important fact

This morning the Herald-Leader editorial board weighed in on the recent Pearson scandal. Good. As the editorial points out, there are problems with the appearance, if not fact, of public officials getting too cozy with private companies who stand to gain millions through public contracts. But the facts are important. If the public is to make a reasoned judgment about the issue, they ought to have them all.

KASA's Wayne Young recently defended Lu Young (no relation so far as I know) in H-L saying that it was "both troubling and telling that the Herald-Leader would reprint a story from the New York Times regarding Jessamine County Schools superintendent Lu Young taking a professional trip to Australia without even making the effort to contact her for a response." Wayne complained about several of the facts being left out of the story, but for some reason did not mention that Lu voted against Pearson. Surely, that matters to some degree.

a more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/01/08/2020488/jan-8-letters-to-the-editor.html#storylink=cpy

The H-L's lead confirmed the editors' respect for Young - right before they disrespected her.

Similar to the H-L, KSN&C also reprinted the New York Times articles that originally raised the issue. We were criticized by a few folks who objected to our reprinting the story without jumping through all of the professional journalistic hoops. Fair enough. We didn't. But when Lu Young contacted KSN&C to make sure we knew that she never voted for Pearson, and could prove it, we felt honor-bound to include it in our coverage and we posted the Jessamine Journal article that outlined the facts. We did what I imagined a professional journalist would do. We understand from Young that she sent the same information to the Times and the Herald-Leader. So far, the Times has stood by their story without any mention, but more surprisingly, the H-L completely ignored it in today's editorial.

If it's true that private companies might use undue influence to gain the favor of public officials - and it is - then it's important to point out - with respect to Young at least - that it didn't happen that way. After her fancy trip, Young voted for a different company. It doesn't absolve her, but it certainly lowers the degree of concern over her integrity.

To know pertinent facts about a case, but then to knowingly leave them out of the piece because including them weakens one's argument, is a questionable standard of journalism. Sound ethical practices of our public officials, and the reporters who cover them, both matter.

This from the Herald-Leader:

Lu Young, superintendent of schools in Jessamine County, is a respected professional who was named Kentucky's superintendent of the year in 2011. So, to many of her admirers here in Kentucky, it was a surprise and a shame her name appeared at the top of a story in the first section of The New York Times.

It was not because of her accomplishments as an educator but to recount a trip she took that illustrates the ethical muddy waters stirred up by the extremely close relationship between Pearson Education Inc. and the Pearson Foundation.

The story, reprinted in the Herald-Leader, evoked defensive praise for Young and scorn of the Times and its reporting. There's no reason to believe Young did anything wrong, but criticizing the messenger won't make this go away. The suspicion of unethical dealing will persist until educators stop taking trips paid for by companies that stand to make money selling products and services to their institutions.

Briefly, Young went to Australia with other educators on a trip organized by an education nonprofit and paid for by the Pearson Foundation. A few months later, back in Kentucky, she participated in a panel that interviewed executives of education companies, including Pearson, that were bidding to run Kentucky's testing program.

Although its bid was $2 million higher than the low bidder, CTB/McGraw Hill, Pearson got the contract.

The Times had reported earlier that Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday had taken similar trips, to China and Brazil, after his department approved the $57-million contract with Pearson.

Pearson protests that the foundation is simply a way of returning money to education and that educators benefit from meeting colleagues from other countries and seeing what they're doing.

No argument here that our education system can gain from a broader view. But the links between the two Pearsons are too close for comfort. Here are some of the connections that have been reported:

1. The company controls the foundation's board of directors;
2. At least one person is an officer of both the company and the foundation;
3. They have the same address.
4. Although Pearson Education executives have attended the education conferences subsidized by Pearson Foundation money, no representatives of other education companies have been identified on the lists of attendees.

We make no case that either Young or Holliday did anything wrong. Both say the trips had no bearing on the contract.

This would have been a nice place to mention that Young voted for Measured Progress, not Pearson.

But, this is the thing: The contract wasn't let solely on price, nor should it have been. Educational testing is a complex business, so there's a significant element of judgment involved in evaluating the bidder's services.

No less an expert than Jack Abramoff, the disgraced former lobbyist in Washington, explained last week in Frankfort, how judgment can become clouded by gifts and hospitality.

The (Louisville) Courier-Journal's account of Abramoff's talk includes this:

"Lawmakers never believe they will be bought, Abramoff added. But he warned that lobbyists become successful by building relationships and that gifts or contributions are designed to take advantage of a person's natural instincts to express gratitude. 'When somebody does something good for you, you are going to have to feel that way in your soul, and when you do I would hold that that is the problem,' he said,"

We'll go even a step further. Even if a cozy relationship doesn't lead to a problem, the appearance of the relationship will lead to suspicion that a problem does or could exist. Our ethics laws are intended not only to avoid corruption but the appearance of it because both destroy public confidence in government.

Nothing is more important to Kentucky than public education, which relies on public support. These trips aren't worth the price in public confidence. Educators should stop taking them.

Since the selection of Pearson was ultimately made possible by the input of KDE staff, H-L could do a public service by drilling into the specific issues of how the KDE contract came to be awarded to Pearson after two subgroups thought a different company could provide better service. Who voted for that?

It is the state legislature's failure to adequately fund the changes it demands in law that makes this kind of situation more likely to occur than not. The commissioner is essentially left with two choices: fail to implement the law, or go find the money to implement it - anywhere other than Frankfort. The net effect is that the federal government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation drive education policy in Kentucky because it's where the money is - and there is no counter-balance for those who think that corporate education reform is off track.

Kentucky is 14th in 2011 Quality Counts Ranking

2012-01-12T14:11:00.001-05:00

State Leaps 20 Spots in National Education Ranking

Kentucky’s ranking in an annual grading of all states on key education indicators rose dramatically this year, placing the state 14th in the nation for its work on academic standards, the teaching profession and many other variables related to public education.

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 34th in the nation in this annual report.

“Kentuckians should take a great deal of pride in the Commonwealth’s standings related to P-12 education,” said Gov. Steve Beshear. “Kentucky continues to show measureable progress in education, and the rankings provided in ‘Quality Counts’ recognize the hard work of teachers, administrators, parents and community members.”

“Much of the impetus for Kentucky’s high ranking can be traced to 2009’s Senate Bill 1,” said Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday. “That legislation set us on a course to become a leader nationwide, and with the support of Gov. Beshear, legislators, teachers, administrators and parents, Kentucky’s work in school accountability, teacher training, college/career readiness and stronger academic standards is moving us in the right direction.”

“Quality Counts” provides data and information about states’ efforts in six areas:

K-12 Achievement
Standards, Assessments & Accountability
Teaching Profession
School Finance
Transitions & 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 C+, an improvement over last year’s grade and a higher grade than the national average, which was a C.

No states received a grade of A in this edition of “Quality Counts.” The highest-ranking state was Maryland, with a B+. Three states received B grades; five states received B- grades; and five states (including Kentucky) received C+ grades.

State Report Cards here:

The National Scene

Although economists have officially declared the “Great Recession” to be over, the nation and states continue to struggle back from the most severe economic downturn in generations and face new challenges in delivering a high-quality education to all students, according to Education Week’s annual education report card. The nation receives a C when graded across the six distinct areas of policy and performance tracked by Quality Counts, the most comprehensive ongoing assessment of the state of American education. For the third year in a row, Maryland is the top-ranked state, earning the nation’s highest overall grade, a B-plus.

Massachusetts and New York follow close behind, each receiving a B. The majority of states receive grades of C-plus or lower.

The report reintroduces its K-12 Achievement Index, which evaluates the strength of a state’s performance against 18 individual indicators that capture: current achievement, improvements over time, and poverty-based disparities or gaps. Massachusetts emerges as the top-achieving state this year, earning a grade of B, followed closely by Maryland and New Jersey, each with a B-minus. Perennial strong performers, these states also comprised the nation’s top three scorers in 2008, the last time the index was updated. Despite some solid showings, a wide gulf separates the leaders from the rest of the pack, with the average state earning a D-plus on K-12 Achievement. Four states—Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, and West Virginia—and the District of Columbia receive grades of F on the index.

“If the turbulence and waves of hardship brought by the recession have taught us anything, it’s that America will sink or swim in a global economy based on its success educating all of its citizens, not just a privileged few, to high standards” said Christopher B. Swanson, vice president of Editorial Projects in
Education, the nonprofit organization that publishes Education Week. “If we are going to continue advancing as a nation, then strong, sustained, and equitable educational improvement must become the norm for students in every state rather than the exception that it is today.”

The report finds that the nation has made little progress improving the opportunities for students to succeed throughout their lives. The nation receives a C-plus on the report’s annual Chance-for-Success Index, the same grade as last year. Massachusetts earns the only A and remains at the top of the national rankings for the fourth year running. Connecticut, New Hampshire, and New Jersey each post grades of A-minus. New Mexico and Nevada receive the lowest scores, with grades of D-plus and D respectively. The EPE Research Center’s Chance-for-Success Index provides a detailed look at the role that education plays as a person moves from childhood, through formal K-12 education, and into college and the workforce.

Quality Counts 2011 also offers an updated view of state efforts to better coordinate the connections between K-12 schooling and other segments of the education pipeline, including early-childhood education, college readiness, and links to the world of work. The report finds marked improvement in this Transitions and Alignment category, where the nation’s grade has risen to a C-plus for 2011, from a C in 2009. Five states earned grades of A this year, and a majority of states have enacted at least eight of the 14 policies tracked in the report. The most rapid movement is seen around policies that promote college preparation, which has been a major focus of the Common Core State Standards Initiative and the federal
Race to the Top program.

This year’s report includes a special study of state education-finance policies as well as its annual analysis of school spending patterns and the equitable distribution of those funds. The national grade in school finance holds steady at a C for 2011, after earlier dropping from a C-plus in 2009.

JCPS board OKs revised student-assignment plan

2012-01-12T13:52:00.000-05:00

This from the Courier-Journal:

About 2,000 more elementary students in Jefferson County Public Schools will be allowed to attend schools closer to their homes this fall, as the school board voted unanimously Monday night to adopt a number of changes to its controversial student-assignment plan.

Under the proposal, the district will still have six clusters of elementary schools from which parents can choose — rather than doubling them to 12 as a previous plan proposed — yet give schools more credit for diversity within their enrollment areas.

Limited-English students also will be added in the diversity index for the first time, and kindergartners will not have to reapply to their same school for first grade — a previous requirement that upset many parents.

Though not as sweeping as earlier proposals, the changes will maintain integrated schools while reducing bus-ride times for some students and avoiding disruptions to school choice, district officials said...

House Education Chairman Could Allow Charter School Vote

2012-01-10T15:14:00.000-05:00

This from WFPL:

A vote on legislation that would allow charter schools may finally have it’s day in the Kentucky state House education committee.

House Education Chairman Carl Rollins says he’s considering allowing a charter school bill to receive a hearing and a vote in his committee this session. That’s been unheard of since Rollins assumed the chair of that committee.

Rollins makes no guarantee he’ll bring up a charter school bill, but says if there’s legislation out there he can deal with, a vote could happen.

“It would depend on what the bill is,” Rollins says. “I think the innovation districts bill would pass, I’m not sure if, and I think it passed last year and it’s the same bill this year. Charter schools have never really been voted on or brought up in committee, we have discussed them in the interim committee meetings but we’ve not voted on them.”

The “districts of innovation” bill is Rollins’s own take on charter schools. Instead of creating new public charters schools, it would allow current school districts, up to five a year, to break free of some state regulations to operate outside the box, more like charters. Rollins says the bill is “charter school-like.”

Charter school advocates aren’t in favor of Rollins approach, saying it’s more restrictive than actual charter schools. One group has made a push, through TV ads, to get the public on its side when it comes to advocating for charter schools. And House Speaker Greg Stumbo has said he’s willing to discuss the issue.

Rollins says the TV ads haven’t inspired his possible change of heart on charter school legislation.

One House lawmaker currently has a charter school bill up for discussion, Republican state Rep. Brad Montell of Shelbyville. And while Rollins didn’t specifically commit to hearing Montell’s bill, he did say if he allows a discussion of a charter schools bill, it will get a vote as well.

“If I call the bill I’ll let a vote,” Rollins said. “I don’t think I’ve ever called a bill, since I’ve been chairman, just for discussion that didn’t eventually get a vote.”

Opponents of charter schools say they don’t improve education significantly and they take resources from other public schools.

Visiting the Troops

2012-01-09T19:00:00.000-05:00

Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday will act as a temporary, unpaid employee of the Murray Independent school system on Wednesday, January 11.

The school district was the winner of the “Extra Holliday” item offered by the Kentucky School Public Relations Association (KYSPRA) during a silent auction at its Fall Institute last September. The win entitled the school district to Commissioner Holliday’s presence for an entire day, with an agenda of district personnel’s choosing.

Murray Independent Superintendent Bob Rogers and school leaders established a day-long itinerary that includes stints at the preschool and elementary, middle and high schools in the district.

Holliday’s activities will include bus duty, music class, lunch with 6th graders and a district leadership team meeting.

“I’m very excited about this opportunity,” said Holliday. “One of my goals as commissioner is to visit every school district in the state. These visits keep me connected to the real work happening in our schools, and my day at Murray Independent will provide valuable insights.”

Media outlet representatives are invited to a forum at Murray Elementary from 7:30 to 8 a.m. CT on Jan. 11. Holliday will be on hand to answer questions and as a special guest on Tiger Cub News, the school’s news program. Holliday also will be available at 4:30 p.m. CT at the Murray Board Office to meet with media representatives.

AGENDA – EXTRA HOLLIDAY AT MURRAY INDEPENDENT

(All times are Central.)

7 a.m. – 9:40 a.m. Murray Elementary, 111 Broach Avenue

10 a.m. – 12:20 p.m. Murray Middle, 801 Main Street

12:30 p.m. – 1:10 p.m. Murray Preschool Headstart, 208 South 13th Street

1:20 p.m. – 3:10 p.m. Murray High, 501 Doran Road

3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. Murray Independent School District Board Office, 208 South 13th Street

SOURCE: KDE press release

Reform: Value-Added Ratings -- For Think Tanks

2012-01-07T11:20:00.000-05:00

This from This Week In Education:

Everyone gets rated and ranked these days -- teachers, schools, districts, states -- some of these ratings are quite elaborate. But not think tanks, or at least not education think tanks.

This seems interesting and unfair to me -- and an opportunity for someone to step in make a name for herself. After all, just this week AEI's Rick Hess named his top edu-scholar (Linda Darling-Hammond) of the year, and the Washington Post's Ezra Klein named its all-purpose think tank of the year (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities).

Some of the key measures would have to be original research, media mentions, and political influence. Research quality. Cost-per-report.

House to Release Teacher, Accountability Bills This Week

2012-01-07T11:14:00.000-05:00

This from Politics K-12Education Week:

The House education committee will put out draft bills this week that address the issues at the heart of the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act—teacher quality and accountability, Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., said this morning on Bill Bennett's radio show "Morning in America."

Kline, chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, didn't elaborate on the substance of the bills. But it does sound like this is going to be yet another blow to Adequate Yearly Progress or AYP, the law's signature yardstick. The administration's waiver package and an NCLB reauthorization bill that passed out of the Senate education committee last year essentially scrap AYP as it's used now.

Kline doesn't like it either.

Rare Bipartisan Support Secures Charter Bill Passage

2012-01-07T11:11:00.000-05:00

This from Education Week:

The U.S. House of Representatives took what has become a rare step last week: It passed an education bill with broad bipartisan support. The Sept. 13 bill involving charter schools passed by an overwhelming vote of 365 to 54—but there was still a lot of drama behind the scenes.

The measure is one of a number of small, targeted bills the House will consider in reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, currently known as the No Child Left Behind Act. It would allow states to tap federal funds to replicate charter school models that have a track record of success. Right now, the federal charter school program is financed at $255 million.

Five Thoughts About No Child Left Behind on Its 10th Anniversary

2012-01-07T11:08:00.000-05:00

This from Michael Petrilli atThe Huffington Post

The federal law that everybody loves to hate turns ten on Sunday. Here's what to think about it:

It worked! As Mark Schneider shows in his recent paper for Fordham -- and as Eric Hanushek and others demonstrated before him -- poor, minority, and low-achieving students made huge progress in math, and sizable progress in reading, during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Their most recent scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress indicate all-time highs for most grades and subjects. These students are typically performing two grade levels ahead of where their peers were fifteen years ago in math, and are reading at least one grade level higher. So how to explain these historic gains? While we can't draw causal conclusions from NAEP, we can make educated guesses. What's clear is that states that adopted "consequential accountability" in the nineties saw big test-score jumps, and the late-adopter states saw similar progress once No Child Left Behind kicked into action. So, while other factors could have been in play, too (such as efforts to reduce class size or the cessation of the crack-cocaine epidemic), there's a pretty good case that testing and accountability succeeded in spurring higher student achievement, at least at the bottom of the performance spectrum.

But it couldn't work forever. As Schneider argues, the test score gains sparked by NCLB-style accountability appear to have hit a plateau. We're back to anemic progress in most grades and subjects, particularly in the states (like Texas) that embraced testing and accountability first. That shouldn't be too surprising. While the initial pressure (and shame) provided by consequential accountability appears to have changed behavior at the district and school level, after a while being called a "failing school" loses its sting. Furthermore, holding "schools" accountable has rarely equaled holding individuals accountable -- real live teachers and principals who might lose their jobs. Once it became clear that NCLB was all bark and no bite, schools could return to the status quo ante.

The trade-offs are real. The good news is that we've seen enormous progress for our lowest-achieving students. The bad news is that we've seen languid progress for our highest achievers. The good news is that math scores are way up and, to a lesser degree, reading scores are up, too (especially for poor and minority kids). The bad news is that history and science have been squeezed out of the elementary school curriculum, particularly in high poverty schools. Whether these trade-offs were worth it depends on your point of view. Personally, I'd prefer a policy that aims for more balance: achievement gains across the performance spectrum, not just at the bottom and a more holistic view of what it means for students to be well educated. Literacy and numeracy are (obviously) not enough.

Pet ideas from both parties crashed and burned. The Democrats gave the country the "white elephant" gift of the "highly qualified teachers" mandate, a policy that succeeded in turning the nation's teachers against NCLB from the very beginning, managed to tie up myriad schools (including charters) in all manner of red tape, and gravely threatened Teach For America, one of the most promising reforms of the NCLB era. From the Republicans we got "supplemental educational services," a.k.a. free tutoring. This was more of an impulse than a fleshed out idea. It was never clear whether SES was meant to be a sanction for failing districts (if you don't improve your test scores, we'll take some of your Title I money away from you), a serious effort at parental choice, or a way to "extend" learning time for needy kids. Regardless, its entire design was predicated on cooperation from school districts, which were responsible for facilitating the flow of funds away from their coffers and into the hands of nonprofit and for-profit providers. As my Italian grandmother would have said, "Fatta chance."

It's time for something new. On this point, virtually everybody agrees. But what should the next phase of education reform entail? The contours are now taking shape. First, there's agreement that, for accountability to be real, it has to be placed upon real live people, not just amorphous "schools." That means, first and foremost, holding teachers accountable for their performance. Thus the interest in: more sophisticated teacher-evaluation systems, tenure reform, performance pay, and all the rest. Second, there's broad consensus that we need to balance the "tough love" approach of accountability with the "helping hand" of capacity-building: Providing teachers with tools like a coherent curriculum -- linked to the new Common Core standards -- so they don't have to make it all up on their own. And third, we can all glimpse the promise of digital learning, if technology can be harnessed effectively and if the political and governance roadblocks can be removed. But what's the appropriate (and politically feasible) federal role in all of this? In all of these reforms, Uncle Sam's involvement will be -- and should be -- minimal. The political thirst for aggressive federal involvement in education has been quenched, and the dollars to fund it spent. Plus these "next wave" reforms require nuance, care, and thoughtfulness to get them right -- attributes not associated with Uncle Sam. In other words, reform will continue, but the federal government will lead from behind. As well it should.

Happy birthday, No Child Left Behind. And here's hoping that you don't make it to eleven.

Texas Students Caught Cheating

2012-01-07T10:59:00.000-05:00

Hundreds Affected At 'Exemplary' High School

This from The Huffington Post:

Hundreds of high school seniors in Texas were caught cheating on their final exams last month. Now, officials at the southeast Houston Clear Creek Independent School District are investigating how around 200 students at Clear Lake High School acquired test answers before the exam in December.

Educators at Clear Lake realized that about a third of the exams had identical answers. As a result, administrators nulled all 600 tests, and offered the students two options: take the test again or have their final grade calculated without a final exam grade.

"We're committed to determine how the test was accessed, how it was distributed, what we can do as a school, as a school district, to ensure our internal processes to make sure that this doesn't happen again," Clear Creek ISD spokesperson Elaina Polson told KTRK.

The test was administered over several days. The test on the second day was a different version from the first, but school officials said some students gave answers that corresponded to questions on the test from the day before, KTRK reports.

In a letter to parents and students, Principal Debra Dixon wrote that students will receive an "incomplete" grade until they make a decision on whether to skip or retake the exam, Your Houston News reports. Clear Lake High School was rated "Exemplary" in 2009 and 2010...

Ohio moves to defund remedial courses

2012-01-07T10:54:00.000-05:00

This from the Hechinger Report:

As finals approached, nearly 240 students in a computer lab worked through basic algebra problems at Kent State University, where they and more than 3,200 of their classmates had been deemed unprepared for college-level math. They struggled to solve for x in equations like 3x + 1 = 7—a skill students are meant to master in middle school. (The correct answer: x = 2.)

Just down the hallway, university officials were trying to crunch a few numbers of their own, analyzing how much it’d cost to keep providing such remedial education to students who don’t arrive ready for college-level work.

The annual price tag for remedial education in American colleges and universities is at least $3.6 billion, according to the Alliance for Excellent Education, a national advocacy organization in Washington, D.C. It’s also a reason many college students quit in frustration, contributing to high dropout rates.

Now, in a largely overlooked but precedent-setting move, cash-strapped Ohio has said it’ll soon stop footing the bill for remedial courses. The state’s 2007 budget quietly mandated that the government phase out money for remediation at four-year universities beginning in the 2014-2015 academic year, and eliminate such funding altogether by 2020.

The gap between the skills with which students graduate from high school and what colleges expect them to be able to do has come under increased scrutiny, as federal policymakers push states to increase college graduation rates....

How Much?

2012-01-07T10:46:00.000-05:00

Bill in Kentucky legislature
would tie teacher evaluations
to student performance

House Ed Cmte Chair Rollins is Thinking 30%

Including student test score performance as one factor in a teacher's evaluation is going to happen. It ought to happen. The question is how much should it count? No social science measure is absolute. Given all of the known weaknesses in our present ability to accurately assess any given teachers' contribution (the value they add) to test scores is cause for extreme caution. The system is fraught with weaknesses that render the accounting unfair. For that reason, Rollins's number is too much by half.

Still, Rollins must be hearing from those number lovers who would have test scores count for half of a teacher's performance evaluation. That is 30's biggest virtue. It's not worse.

This from Jim Warren at the Herald-Leader:

Under legislation pending in the General Assembly, student achievement would become a standardized part of Kentucky public school teachers' performance evaluations for the first time.

House Bill 40, sponsored by House Education Committee Chairman Carl Rollins, D-Midway, would authorize the Kentucky Department of Education to implement the evaluation system starting with the 2013 school year. Rollins' committee is to take up the measure Tuesday.

The Kentucky Education Association generally has signed off on the proposed evaluation system. But closely tying teachers' evaluations to students' academic progress could be one of the most sensitive issues in the 2012 legislative session.

The idea already is generating heat in Tennessee and some other states that are implementing new teacher evaluation systems in answer to the U.S. Department of Education, which wants student achievement factored into evaluations as a way of improving instruction.

As now planned, Kentucky teachers would be assessed on criteria such as their communication skills, knowledge of subject matter, ethics, use of technology and how well their students are doing academically.

The Kentucky Department of Education is developing the evaluation system now. But the state Board of Education has not yet decided the extent to which student achievement would affect a teacher's overall score. That could be a sticking point...

Charter Schools: Beneficial Or Detrimental To Rural Areas?

2012-01-06T15:56:00.000-05:00

This from Rural Education:

It isn't easy to start a rural charter school, but it's an option some communities are embracing as a means of preserving sites that otherwise might be shuttered.

Indiana, for example, has one rural charter school—Rural Community Academy in Sullivan, Ind.—but it soon will be home to a second, Canaan Community Academy in Canaan, Ind.

Residents of this 99-person town lost their local school after the district decided to close it because of low enrollment. Later, they discovered a story by StateImpact, a collaboration of WFIU, Indiana Public Broadcasting stations and NPR, in which its reporters attempted to start a fake charter school, SimSchool, to show what that process involves.

From the story, Canaan residents learned about the Rural Community Academy, and they decided to turn their now-shuttered community school into a charter. Canaan Community Academy will open in August in the same building with donated furniture, computers and books, according to StateImpact.

Still, charter schools can be seen as a negative in rural communities when they become competitors instead of replacement options. When charter schools are launched alongside traditional schools, they often draw from the same student population, which decreases enrollment, and consequently the per pupil funding, of traditional schools.

The bottom line? "The charter school experiment appears dual-edged. For rural areas, the focus on school improvement might unify citizens. But poor economic conditions and conflicts might threaten these positive efforts," according to an ERIC Digest report on rural charter schools.

Nationally, the number of charter schools in rural areas is growing, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. The number has increased from 207, or 13 percent, of all charter schools in 2000 to 652, or 15 percent, in 2008, according to statistics cited by the National Charter School Resource Center. But those schools are still scarce; those living in rural Indiana, for example, would have to travel more than 40 miles in many cases to get to the nearest charter school, according to StateImpact.

The Business of Philanthropy

2012-01-06T15:50:00.000-05:00

John Wilson the former National Education Association executive director, and now, a senior fellow at the Pearson Foundation, roused up yesterday to push back against recent New York Times stories implicating school administrators who took international trips sponsored by his foundation. After casting a few aspersions at the Times, whose foundation, he says, does the same thing, Wilson claimed the tours were simply philanthropy. No ulterior motives.

Still, Wilson readily admits his own conflict of interest. But in his mind, it was "the media attention to these innocent study tours [that] has created an appearance of inappropriateness and a suspicion around business decisions. Wilson complained that the Times' "reporter has not provided all the information about the strict ethics laws that educational leaders follow before taking advantage of these study tours."

I would have thought the trips themselves created the appearance of impropriety and it was incumbent upon the CCSSO, the Pearson Foundation and the travelers themselves to show otherwise, as Lu Young has begun to do. It is the media that has kept attention on issues related to private companies jockeying for public funds - which, as Wilson fails to point out, are at the end of the rainbow for Pearson.

I guess one person's philanthropy is another person's loss leader.

This from John Wilson Unleashed:

Sometimes Philanthropy is just Philanthropy

I have read with interest the articles in the New York Times attacking education leaders for taking study trips that were underwritten by the Pearson Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Pearson Education. I will admit that after the first article, I had hoped that this would be a one-time article by a cynical reporter looking for a good story that would resonate. Now, there have been two other articles. Of course, I could be cynical, too, and assume that his corporate bosses are pushing this story for other reasons since I know the New York Times Foundation has sponsored very similar trips.

After retiring as Executive Director of the National Education Association, I chose to accept a Senior Fellow position with the Pearson Foundation. I agreed to three days a month to assist Pearson Foundation leaders on fulfilling their mission around literacy, learning, and great teaching. I admit to a conflict of interest when defending this foundation that supports public education and teachers; however, I have no such conflict when it comes to telling what I know to be true.

I attended the study trips in Helsinki, London, and Rio de Janeiro as a voice for teacher unions. The trips were all organized by the Council of Chief State School Officers. That is one of many things I like about the Pearson Foundation. They trust educators to plan their own professional development. The programs were designed and executed by CCSSO staff. There were no sales presentations or side conversations about Pearson products. It was purely an educational study tour of countries doing better at student achievement than the United States. It was about deep and engaging conversations with leaders of those high-achieving countries. It was an experience that could not have occurred without philanthropic support. I worry when our educational leaders are "siloed" and not allowed to experience the global community that exists today, and I am impressed when they take the opportunity to learn from others.

I understand that the media attention to these innocent study tours has created an appearance of inappropriateness and a suspicion around business decisions. That is unfortunate and unfair. I do believe this reporter has not provided all the information about the strict ethics laws that educational leaders follow before taking advantage of these study tours. While education leaders may choose to decline to do future trips, I hope government will budget for our leaders to have a global perspective. I also hope Pearson Foundation will continue giving teachers the opportunity to visit other countries and for Teachers of the Year to come together and share best practices. I hope the Pearson Foundation will continue to donate thousands of books to schools and children to expand literacy. I hope the Foundation will continue to fund schools that are teaching our students 21st Century skills through digital media.

I hope others will speak up about the good work that philanthropic organizations like the Pearson Foundation do. They are vital to the success of our public schools. Let's not punish those who are willing to fund educational interests that government does not. Let's use as much ink to praise good work and publish truth.

For me, I subscribe to the words of Swedish statesman and former United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold, "Never, for the sake of peace and quiet, deny your own experience or convictions." I invite you to speak your truth.

Jessamine superintendent Young refutes New York Times insinuations of bribery

2012-01-06T09:36:00.001-05:00

UPDATED:

Young's Group Recommended Measured Progress,

Not Pearson

Jessamine County Schools Superintendent Lu Young told KSN&C, by phone from Washington DC today, that her involvement with a panel called together to recommend a test vendor for Kentucky schools was not influenced by a prior Australian trip sponsored by the AASA, but partially funded by the Pearson company.

Young told KSN&C that the invitation to take the trip came in Spring 2010. She traveled in July 2010. She was asked to serve on the KDE committee in February 2011. It was then that she learned Pearson was a bidder but said she was "not conflicted in the process." At no point did [the trip] haunt me, she said.

Young explained the KDE process to KSN&C saying that she served on one of three groups. Her group looked at technical issues related to the test. As the tally sheet below shows, her group did not recommend Pearson. But after all three groups' scores were tallied, Pearson came out on top.

(See RFP determinations at the end of this post.)

Young said she shared the information with New York Times reporter Michael Winerip, but to no avail.

She recently sat down with the Jessamine Journal to go over the details.

This from the Jessamine Journal:

A national story this week examining possible connections between an education publishing company and trips for state education officials zeroed in on Jessamine County’s schools chief, Lu Young. Young spoke candidly about the matter Tuesday, giving her side of the story and filling in what she called “glaring omissions.”

The New York Times piece by Michael Winerip began by questioning Young’s integrity, pointing to her involvement in a state committee recommendation of Pearson, Inc. for a contract after she participated in a trip to Australia sponsored by the Pearson Foundation, a nonprofit branch of the company.

Young made the trip to Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney in July 2010 with nine other superintendents from around the country. The visit featured an “international symposium” and focused on a dialogue about “21st-century skills” and collaboration as members of the group looked at Australia’s education system.
While the Pearson Foundation provided grant funding for the trip, Young attended at the request of Daniel Domenech, the executive director of the American Association of School Administrators (AASA). She was invited as part of the just-formed AASA Council of County Superintendents.

“Pearson did not contact me and say, ‘Hey, do you want to go to Australia?’” Young said. “The director of my professional association invited me to attend, and I did that — as a learning experience, just exactly as it was described to me.”

Winerip downplayed the seriousness of the trip, writing there was “ample time for play” and citing Young’s quote in a promotional video that kangaroos were a “highlight” of the visit to Canberra. Young also met with education leadership from the local, regional and federal levels during the trip, learning about national standards, expanding broadband use in education and 21st-century learning.

“The story made it sound like they were kind of junkets, and I was embarrassed by this article that sounds like the only important thing I got out of it was pictures of kangaroos,” Young said. “There was a lot of really, really good learning going on.”

The group was accompanied by Kathy Hurley, a vice president of both Pearson Education and the Pearson Foundation. Young said every interaction she had with Hurley focused on impacting American education and there were never any “sales pitches” for Pearson products or services.

“There wasn’t ever any quid pro quo, any expectation that we were going on this trip and then we would do something for them in return,” Young said.

The superintendent returned from the trip and went back to work for the new school year. It was in February 2011 when she stepped into the water she saw as clear but Winerip saw as muddy in the Times article.

With a dozen or more others, Young was asked to serve on a technical scoring group for assessment vendors at the state level. She received proposals from three companies — Pearson, Measured Progress and CTB/McGraw-Hill — before the committee met to go over the proposals.

“It was at that point that I knew that Pearson was one of the three, and even then, in all candor, that did not in any way conflict me,” Young said. “I wasn’t making any connections to Australia at all, (and) had not been contacted by Pearson or any of the vendors, and still to this day have not since.”

The committee’s recommendation came from the accumulation of three scores: a technical score, a cost score and an oral-presentation score.

Winerip’s story suggested that Young favored Pearson, citing the Australia trip and that Young and her fellow committee members recommended Pearson despite McGraw-Hill’s lower bid. But Measured Progress was the company that came out on top in the two scores Young judged, according to the final scoring sheet, a public record Young provided.

The technical scoring group graded each proposal based on a rubric, agreeing what number to assign for each section of the scoring guide. Measured Progress received 2,220 points out of 2,400; Pearson and McGraw-Hill scored 2,180 and 1,800, respectively. The three finished in the same order in oral-presentation grades, in which Young was also involved.

The third score, based on cost, was the responsibility of staff in the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) Office of Administration and Support and did not involve Young. Cost scores also had Pearson second, with McGraw-Hill on top with the lowest price and Measured Progress third with the highest. The grand-total scores out of 4,600 possible points were Pearson with 3,884, Measured Progress with 3,579, and McGraw-Hill with 3,467.

The state department of education announced April 15 that it had contracted with Pearson to provide content-area tests and writing assessments. The $7.66 million contract period ends June 30, 2012, with the possibility of three additional two-year renewals for a total of $57.8 million, according to KDE documentation.

Winerip’s story ran in the Times earlier this week and included one quote from a statement Young had e-mailed to him in which she said the trip and contract selection were “completely unrelated.” The article hit closer to home when it was reprinted in the Lexington Herald-Leader on Tuesday; Young said the Herald-Leader did not contact her for comment.

“I’d be happy to answer any questions anybody has about it, because I didn’t feel like I had a chance to really tell my side of the story after the article was reprinted,” she said.

Young said she welcomes the scrutiny that comes with her position but that the insinuations of corruption “sting a little bit.”

“We are in positions of trust and authority, and I think the community has a right to know what our activities are, but I don’t think that anybody has a right to just imply any kind of misconduct or bad behavior,” she said.
Winerip did not immediately respond to an e-mail Wednesday morning.

Young was one of three finalists for the Fayette County superintendency — Kentucky’s second-largest — over the summer and was named the state superintendent of the year by the Kentucky Association for School Administrators in November. She is in her 29th year working in the Jessamine County district, her eighth as its superintendent.

“I have legitimate, reasonable, honest responses to things that could look like allegations against my integrity or ethical behaviors,” Young said. “The Australia trip was not frivolous; it was not done in exchange for any influence on my part at all — none whatsoever. And my participation in the state in (the review) process was exactly as it was prescribed and designed to be: one of 13 or 14 people who went through a very regimented process to review those proposals and to rank-order those for recommendation in the procurement process.”

Below are the determinations and findings from the RFP as posted according to the model procurement code:

As Kentucky Legislative Session Opens, Groups Start Stronger Push for Charter Schoolss

2012-01-06T08:33:00.000-05:00

This from WFPL:

The debate over charter schools is one Kentucky educators and legislators have heard and argued over for the last several years.

But supporters of the education reform feel one party left out of those discussions is ready to be brought into the fold. A newly formed group called Kentuckians Advocating Reforms in Education (KARE) is launching TV ad buys across the commonwealth today to educate the general public about charter schools. KARE has spent $8,950 to air the ad on WLKY in Louisville. Former Metro Councilman and Republican mayoral candidate Hal Heiner is the group’s chairman.

Ads are usually reserved for political campaigns, not legislative issues, but KARE and other organizations like the Kentucky Charter School Project are targeting 2012 as the year charter schools should be passed into law in Kentucky.

KARE’s TV ad is running in every media market in the state except Northern Kentucky.

Kentucky is among nine states that have not passed any charter school legislation. Kentucky’s absence of charter schools is one thing many supporters of the reform say has kept the state from winning multiple Race to the Top federal education grants.

A bill to add charter schools has been filed by state Rep. Brad Montell, a Shelbyville Republican, for several years. And supporters in the state Senate have filed and passed bills in that chamber as well, but all the measures have died in the House.

KEAT Press Conference Video

2012-01-05T20:03:00.002-05:00

KEAT: From the 80's Playbook

2012-01-04T19:50:00.000-05:00

The Seven Member

Kentucky Education Action Team

Decries Inadequate School Funding

"The public hears a lot of talk

about education having been 'protected'

from cuts in recent years,

but that's only true on a relative level

to the cuts in funding to other public services.

School funding has not gone untouched,

and the public needs to understand that.

--Bill Scott, Ex Dir KSBA

Recently, Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday and Prichard Committee Executive Director Stu Silberman began a little sabre-rattling over the state budget and the legislature's apparent contentment to underfund the schools. Previously, we've heard from Council for Better Education President Tom Shelton. When I first heard the comment that it was time to "draw a line in the sand," I wondered how serious these educational leaders really were.

A list of organizations resembling the Education Coalition of the 1980's, combined forces today to call on the legislature and governor to do better for Kentucky's children and teachers, Conspicuously absent was the Council for Better Education - the only organization to date with the moxie to actually sue the legislature for ignoring their constitutional duty. Twice. If there's any real "insisting" to be done, it will be done by the Council.

How much better, if the Council were to be encouraged by rough draft amicus briefs (and a good deal of grass roots networking) from the seven groups who popped off today.

I realize that Council for Better Education members are likely also KASS members, but still, if there's sabre-rattling to be done, it helps if the legislature actually believes there's a real threat of political action. ...and any lack of resolve will leave today's announcement as a footnote in history. KEAT's mission is only to "persuade the Kentucky General Assembly, parents and the public." Is this Phase One? Is there more to come?

Jim Warren's lead in the Herald-Leader:

A new education coalition said Wednesday that state support for Kentucky public schools has fallen over the past four years despite perceptions to the contrary, urging Gov. Steve Beshear and the 2012 General Assembly to reverse the trend with more money.

Calling itself KEAT (Kentucky Education Action Team), the new group contended that inflation, combined with state funding that has remained flat or been cut in some areas, has led to declines in seven key programs, including the basic SEEK funding that supports school operations.

"Our purpose is to let our legislators ... and the citizens of Kentucky know the realities of what has happened to funding in our schools over the last four-year period. There has been a trend ... of reduction after reduction after reduction," said Stu Silberman, executive director of the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence and a spokesman for KEAT. The reductions are risky because they have come as Kentucky schools are preparing for new content standards, a new accountability system and a new statewide test, KEAT members said during a news conference in the state Capitol rotunda.

Stu got all that exactly right. The legislature's Senate Bill 1 needs teacher support or it's not going to work.

But absent real tax reform - a can the legislature has been kicking down the street for...how long now? - it's hard to see how this effort works out.

Status quo + promises = 0

It was the legislature's underfunding of the schools during the 1981 session that got 60 of the state's school superintendents mad enough to put their names and their jobs on the line, and stand up. The 1985 session settled the issue. But the legal circumstances are better now. Since the Rose decision, education is a fundamental right. Prichard has built an impressive citizen's network, and the KEA is still the KEA - when they wanna be...(Remember Ernie?)

Since 2007, the "education establishment" as represented by the Action Team members has been "playing nicely together" - even to the point that the KEA has been willing to go along with teacher evaluations based, in part, on test scores, in order to secure federal funding.

While the Prichard Committee has consistently pointed out the differences between the governor's rhetoric, and the actual funding losses schools were suffering, the general attitude has seemed conciliatory, and vaguely hopeful.

What should one make of the fact that the gubernatorial election just ended? Is it safe for the collective patience to have now worn thin?

Silberman said, in the KEAT press release

“Having all of these organizations come together like this is a historic time for Kentucky. We believe that education is the bridge to a better life for all Kentuckians. The progress that has been made over the last 20 years is in danger of regression due to the reductions in funding.”

While I certainly agree with the fact that Kentucky's educational progress is truly threatened by inadequate funding, it remains to be seen whether this is an historic event. So far, it's only a press conference.

This from the AP/Herald-Leader:

The state's leading education advocacy groups joined forces Wednesday to call on Gov. Steve Beshear and lawmakers to increase funding to public schools.

The Kentucky Education Action Team, a coalition of advocacy groups, complained in a Capitol press conference that public schools have taken financial hits in the economic recession that has caused about $1 billion in shortfalls over the past four years...

The Action Team includes:

Kentucky Association of School Administrators
Kentucky Association of School Councils
Kentucky Association of School Superintendents
Kentucky Education Association
Kentucky Parent Teacher Association, and
Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence.
Kentucky Parent Teacher Association

The group is demanding:

restoration of SEEK funding
restoration of textbook funds
fully funded preschool programs
fully-funded teacher training
family resource centers
youth services centers
after school programs and
school safety programs

"Leaders of the coalition said SEEK funding has declined from $4,230 per student in 2008 to $3,769 per student this year. And, they said, state funding for textbooks has dried up entirely.

Sharron Oxendine, president of the 42,000-member Kentucky Education Association, said lawmakers need to know the funding cuts have negative effects in classrooms. As the state's largest teachers' organization, Oxendine said members see those impacts every day...

KEAT Press Release from KSBA:

K-12 groups begin campaign for school funding,
call for restoration of cuts over past four years

For the first time, seven organizations representing the full spectrum of elementary and secondary education in Kentucky have banded together to urge Gov. Steve Beshear and the General Assembly to reverse four years of state funding reductions to key services that support teaching and learning in the state’s public schools.

During a Frankfort news conference today, representatives of the Kentucky Education Action Team (KEAT) called on state leaders to restore funding to the SEEK (Support Education Excellence in Kentucky) program, the primary source of state funding for public schools; and to key elements such as textbooks, preschool, teacher training and family resource and youth services centers, along with afterschool and school safety programs.

“At a time when schools are being expected to significantly boost student achievement, budgeting equals tools that can help teachers and schools succeed for students,” said Tim Hitzfield, president of the Kentucky Association of School Councils and principal of Conner High School in Boone County. “Training, materials, technology and extra time for students are all key investments for kids to succeed instead of just getting by.”

KEAT’s efforts represent the first statewide joint advocacy campaign by the seven founding members: Kentucky Association of School Administrators, Kentucky Association of School Councils, Kentucky Association of School Superintendents, Kentucky Education Association, Kentucky Parent Teacher Association, Kentucky School Boards Association and the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence.

Prichard Committee Executive Director Stu Silberman said, “Having all of these organizations come together like this is a historic time for Kentucky. We believe that education is the bridge to a better life for all Kentuckians. The progress that has been made over the last 20 years is in danger of regression due to the reductions in funding.”

Jessamine County Schools Superintendent Lu Young, a member of the board of directors of the Kentucky Association of School Superintendents, said her members are “excited about the collaboration. This is perhaps the first partnership that focuses entirely on funding issues that impact our children.”

During the Jan. 4 news conference, KEAT released data demonstrating the reductions in state funding to key K-12 programs since 2008, including:

FY 2007-08 FY 2011-12
SEEK $4,230 per student $3,769
Preschool $4,092 $3,191
FRYSCs $103 $87
Afterschool $59 $20
Training $25 $4
Safe schools $17 $6
Textbooks $40 $0 (for the past two years)

“The public hears a lot of talk about education having been ‘protected’ from cuts in recent years, but that’s only true on a relative level to the cuts in funding to other public services,” said Bill Scott, executive director of the Kentucky School Boards Association. “School funding has not gone untouched, and the public needs to understand that.”

Representatives of classroom teachers and district administrators called on state leaders to end the slow eroding of resources that they see affecting student learning.

Sharron K. Oxendine, president of the Kentucky Education Association, a group with 42,000 active, student and retired teachers, said, "KEA members see the impact of reduced funding on their students’ lives and on their own economic welfare every day in our classrooms. KEA believes the united effort to inform lawmakers about the impact of funding cuts is important.”

“Our call to action is necessary and urgent,” said Mayfield Independent Schools Superintendent Lonnie Burgett, president of the Kentucky Association of School Administrators. “Kentucky’s educators are poised to lead our schools in this global society, and our children are engaged and ready to learn. Funding must be restored to meet the higher standards for learning as set forth by the General Assembly in Senate Bill 1 in 2009.”

Kentucky Parent Teacher Association President Teri Gale of Fairdale pledged her organization’s No. 1 focus to “advocate that Kentucky must fully fund all programs it mandates to local school districts.

“Our members believe all parents should be involved both in the home and in the classroom in the education of their children,” she said, “so we support the position that the Kentucky General Assembly acts to restore funding levels for education to 2008 levels.”

KEAT Website:

Mission Statement:
The Kentucky Education Action Team is an action advocacy group whose mission is to develop united messages that will persuade the Kentucky General Assembly, parents and the public to provide and sustain sufficient resources that will advance and support learning for all P-12 public school students to reach their potential for career and college readiness.

KEAT partners believe that:

•The Commonwealth of Kentucky has a moral and ethical obligation to assure that each student is given every opportunity to reach his/her full potential.

•Kentucky’s public schools are a great investment.

•Adequate and sustainable funding of public schools is the constitutional obligation of the legislature.

•Other sources of revenue should be explored quickly if adequate funding for education is not available.

•The General Assembly and Kentucky citizens expect more of our schools than ever before.

•Because Kentucky has among the highest proportion of students living in poverty compared to all other states, more support is needed to ensure that these students succeed in school and in life.

•The needs of our students, schools and state are urgent. The time to act is now.

To support our beliefs, we believe that:

✦ Shared leadership builds capacity for improved student learning
✦ Collaboration creates energy that inspires others
✦ Collaboration is needed among all supporters of public schools for the good of our students and democracy