When you start thinking about dying, it puts everything in perspective

With the end of the semester I've been too busy (with my real job) to keep up with the happenings surrounding the resignation of Commissioner Jon Draud. Students come first.

But KSN&C has heard lots of questions and speculation about what happened...and what's next. Some have expressed surprise at Draud's resignation following the supportive assessment he received from the Kentucky Board of Education at their most recent meeting. But as things often go in politics, what the public sees is just the tip of the iceberg.

Since Draud's first days, some have been less than supportive of his administration. KDE can be a snake pit, and amid the speculation about his health it wasn't always easy to tell if some individuals were rooting for him or against him. Despite a consistent track record of supporting adequate funding for the schools, while in the legislature and as Commish, Draud carried that big R on his chest which may have contributed to the doubt some establishment insiders expressed.

Some KSN&C readers have wanted to know if the governor pushed him out. I have no clue, but doubt it.

The governor is on the record as wanting a national search. Shortly before his inauguration in December, Governor-elect Beshear asked members of the Kentucky Board of Education to delay the appointment of a new education commissioner in order to conduct another national search to the state’s top education leader. The first search had resulted in the disastrous selection of Barbara Erwin, who resigned before her first day as commissioner after discrepancies in her resume were revealed. Within days after requesting the state school board to extend its search for a new commissioner, the board named Draud, a Republican member of the Kentucky House of Representatives.

But when the smoke cleared, their philosophies seemed to match up fairly well and both Draud and Beshear worked to save education from serious cuts. Beshear probably continued to believe that a national search would have been the way to go, but I don't see any evidence that he actually tried to do anything about it.

Was there conversation about his future? You bet.

Within KDE, among educators in the field, and among members of the Kentucky Board of Education there was concern about Draud's vitality. The job requires a lot - and unfortunately, Draud had a stroke.

This from NKY.com:

EDGEWOOD - Jon Draud followed a neurologist's advice and heeded pleas from loved ones when he decided to step away from the career that long ago became a passion.

The longtime educator and former legislator from Edgewood announced Friday that he will resign as Kentucky's commissioner of education in early February.

"It was really a hard decision for me to make after serving in education for about 50 years," Draud said. "I wanted to provide some leadership in a difficult time. But, you know, when you start thinking about dying, then it puts everything in perspective."

The 70-year-old was a unanimous pick a year ago to take over as education commissioner, but he suffered a stroke in September that weakened his leg muscles. Draud has been working in Frankfort about three days a week and undergoing physical therapy the other two days.

He said he is about 80 percent recovered from the stroke.

"I've made a lot of progress, but I want to try and get back to 100 percent," he said. "That job requires 100 percent effort and I'm just not prepared to do that right now." ...

On hearing the news of the retirement, former superintendent Jack Moreland heaped praise on Draud.

"He's one of the absolute finest people that I know," said friend Jack Moreland, who spent 19 years as superintendent of Dayton Independent Schools and led Covington schools for eight years. "He bleeds education. His first thought is education. If you go back and trace his history, even when he was in the General Assembly, his fundamental focus ... was education." ...

What happens next?

Well, already groups are lining up to offer their assistance in the selection of the next commissioner. The last time around, "the K groups" wanted a Kentucky Commissioner. It seems that that desire, having been satisfied, may not burn so brightly this time around, but they still want to participate in the process.

We can count on Governor Beshear reaffirming his belief that a national search should be conducted. And this board will be much better equipped to hear him.

Bob Sexton has said the pretty much the same thing: Consider state- but look national.

Not to be left out, KSN&C would be happy to contribute to the due diligence phase of the selection process - and would hapily give the Board the first peek at anything we discover. Heck, put us on the team and we'll even observe confidentiality. Perhaps the number of board members KSN&C hacked off during the Barbara Erwin affair is now low enough that they would welcome our humble assistance.

Nawwwwww.


Photo by Rachel Stone: Kentucky Education Commissioner Dr. Jon Draud, a graduate of EKU, returned to his alma mater on April 8 to speak to Dr. Richard Day’s Educational Foundations class about current education-related issues in the Commonwealth. While on campus, he also met with President Whitlock and other education leaders to discuss how Eastern can help partner with the Kentucky Department of Education in building education leadership capacity in Kentucky.

Covington's Moreland to retire

Jack Moreland is hanging it up.

Congratulations, Jack.

As I have acknowledged elsewhere, I am indebted to Moreland; not just for the beer he bought me at a Kentucky Association of School Administrators summer meeting, but also "for his clear interpretation of the events surrounding what will surely be the hallmark of his fine career in public education."

I was referring to his leadership of the Council for Better Education during the darkest days of the superintendents' suit against the state - when the legislative and bureaucratic heat was on - and after its historic conclusion. Jack (and Frank Hatfield, the Council for Better Education's first president) submitted ot interviews and allowed me to scour CBE records as part of my doctoral study. When the study was recognized nationally in the field of education law, the Council published it.

Moreland wishes the district had made more progress on the state assessment, but he will retire with an uncommonly proud legacy. His leadership is notable for its shear impact on public education in Kentucky; an impact few can match.

The none too flattering photo is a few years old.

This by Kevin Eigelbach in the Kentucky Post:

Jack Moreland started his tenure as superintendent of the Covington Independent Schools in 2000 as an interim, with a state takeover of the district looming.

He leaves it a better district than he found it, if not a perfect one, said one of his bosses.

Moreland, who announced Tuesday he plans to retire at the end of this school year, gave the district the stability it needed, longtime school board member Jim Vogt said. "He came in a time of turmoil. There was a real sense of people being down, and people leaving.

"The focus he brought was a positive, we-can-do-it kind of attitude, and I think that was contagious."

Moreland was hired as the interim after then-Superintendent James Kemp resigned under pressure from the board. A year before, the state Department of Education had reported that in spite of the district's high spending, its students continued to score poorly on achievement tests.

Moreland brought instant credibility because of his role as a founding member of the Council for Better Education, a coalition of districts that pushed equitable state funding for with a landmark lawsuit.

Funding is always a challenge for superintendents, Moreland said, because there's never enough to pay personnel what they're worth. The coalition's efforts resulted in the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990, which The New York Times called the most sweeping and ambitious education reform in the 50 states.

"I don't think I'll ever be involved in anything as significant as that was," Moreland said. "I only had a small part to play, but I'm awfully proud of the part I did play."

Moreland, who was superintendent of the Dayton Independent Schools at the time, was the first plaintiff in the lawsuit that prompted the Kentucky Supreme Court in 1989 to declare the state's school funding system unconstitutional.

When 100 Kentucky superintendents reactivated the Council in 2003, they unanimously voted for him to lead them.

The Kentucky Association of School Administrators named Moreland its superintendent of the year that year. This fall, he was inducted into the Kentucky Civil Rights Hall of Fame.

"It's not hurt us that he's very well respected on the state level," Vogt said.

"Just by dint of who he is ... he was able to find ways to build bridges that maybe weren't there before," Vogt said. "I think that's real important for school systems today, that they not exist in isolation."

Moreland led a reform of the district built around realigning curricula, emphasizing basic reading instruction and increasing opportunities for teachers to get more training. From 2000 to 2006, the overall academic index for the district's elementary schools rose from 47.1 to 66.4. For middle schools, it rose from 39.4 to 49.9 and for high schools from 51.5 to 60.

"We haven't made as much progress as we would like to have made," Moreland said. "However, clearly, we have made significant progress." All-day kindergarten and expanded early reading opportunities stand to help the district make further, long-term gains, Moreland said.

A graduate of Eastern Kentucky and Xavier universities, Moreland began his career in education almost four decades ago as a chemistry teacher in the Newport and Dayton systems. He served as superintendent of the Dayton Independent Schools for 19 years, then was interim president of Northern Kentucky University from 1996 to 1997.

He followed that with another interim job - as chancellor of the technical branch of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System for a year.

He has taught as an adjunct instructor in school administration at Xavier, and is teaching the subject this semester at NKU.

His four-year contract with the Covington board ends with this school year, and he decided not to accept another four-year contract. He would have been 65 when it ended.

"I've been a superintendent for 26 years, and I've got bruises all over my body to prove it," Moreland said. "It's been a great run, but it's a taxing job."

Some of those bruises came in verbal battles with former Kentucky Education
Commissioner Gene Wilhoit.

When Moreland asked the Department of Education for help in 2002, the department responded with a financial audit of the district.

He told Wilhoit of his frustrations at a board meeting in January 2003.

Wilhoit told him he was simply doing his duty to see that every school district in the state has a balanced budget.

The state assigned former school superintendent Dan Branham to the Covington schools for 18 months to help the district solve its budget problems.

"Dan, you say you can't cut your way out of a deficit. Well, I say you can't cut your way into excellence, either," Moreland told him at the board meeting.

Some of the district's financial problems stemmed from efforts to turn its academic problems around, such as spending $400,000 to overhaul its curricula and $300,000 for a security camera system to improve safety.

The district ended the 2003-2004 school year in the black, a year ahead of a state-imposed deadline.

Over the years, Moreland had some intense discussions with his board members, but he never left a meeting feeling he didn't have a chance to express his opinion, he said.

"Whenever you have a board of education, there will be five different opinions," he said. "The Covington board ... we would deliberate and have our say, but in the end, we came together in consensus."

The current emphasis on school accountability, with federal mandates such as No Child Left Behind, isn't all bad, Moreland said.

"In the late '60s and early '70s, when I began my career, I think we had allowed a lot of complacency to come into education," he said. "Just getting to the end of the school year was an end in itself."

But the pendulum has swung too far the other way, he said, so that test scores have become ends in themselves. Many good things that happen in schools never get measured on an accountability score, he said.

He has no plans for his retirement, except to indulge in his love of travel with his wife. "I don't have a real hobby I'm thrilled about," he said. "My hobby has always been school."

Education reform could be a challenge for state's next governor

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - Longtime superintendent Jack Moreland ranks the state's 1990 education reform law as the “high water mark” for Kentucky public education. In more recent times, he said, the state's commitment to schools has wavered somewhat, which worries him.

“The powers that be, whoever that is, will have to take a strong look at revitalizing that commitment, or we're going to wind up being an also-ran,” said Moreland, superintendent of the Covington Independent school system in northern Kentucky.

Moreland and other educators say the winner of Kentucky's Nov. 6 gubernatorial election will face plenty of challenges to fully restore the momentum of the early and mid-1990s in those heady days when the Kentucky Education Reform Act was enacted and implemented.

Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher, who is seeking re-election, and Democratic challenger Steve Beshear laid out their plans to improve education in responding to an AP questionnaire.

Moreland said the state should put more emphasis on early childhood education and review the school-aid formula and accountability system. Most issues boil down to money, and schools need more of it to meet lofty expectations for student performance, he said.In 1994, 48 percent of the state's general fund budget went to the kindergarten-through-12th grade public system, according to the state Department of Education. By 2002, the percentage of state assistance had slipped to 41 percent, but was up to 44 percent this year.

Fletcher, meanwhile, touts higher state education funding, improved teacher salaries and better student test scores as accomplishments during his first term.“This funding has not just gone blindly into the system, but to establish better tools of accountability,” Fletcher said, adding it will help parents track their children's performance and enable educators to intervene with struggling students “before it's too late.”

Beshear said his goal is to make preschool available to every 3- or 4-year-old Kentucky child on a voluntary basis. Currently, the state limits its preschool funding to those children meeting disability or family income guidelines.Beshear initially wants to raise income qualifications to 200 percent of the federal poverty level - or $41,300 for a family of four - so more Kentuckians can enroll their children in a state-subsidized, half-day preschool program. He eventually wants to make it available to children from higher-income families, which would pay fees on a sliding scale.Beshear also said he wants to “redesign high schools,” providing more opportunities for students to take advanced placement courses while enhancing education standards and developing early interventions for students deemed dropout risks.

“We need more kids graduating from high school, and with higher skill sets and more sophisticated levels of learning,” Beshear said.Beshear said he wants to help larger schools convert to smaller “schools within schools,” saying that students “learn better in smaller schools and smaller classrooms.”

Fletcher and Beshear disagree on whether to single out certain teachers for bonuses.“I have proposed additional teacher compensation that rewards teachers for doing additional work to improve student achievement,” Fletcher said.

In this year's General Assembly session, Fletcher backed legislation that would have provided cash bonuses to teachers whose students did well in AP exams in calculus, physics and chemistry, as well as incentives for such teachers with high scores on certification tests. The legislation failed to win final passage.

Fletcher said he supports tuition assistance for teachers going back to school to become accredited in certain subjects, or tuition forgiveness for teachers working in those subjects.Beshear took a different approach, saying that “valuing the subjects taught by teachers differently in terms of pay seems to create more problems than it solves.”

Beshear said he wants to expand distance learning and called for a comprehensive review to make the education system more efficient by updating and revamping outdated programs.

Fletcher also touted the “Read to Achieve” program championed by his wife, Glenna. He said the reading-assistance efforts are “creating wonderful success stories. The governor said another goal is for teacher pay in Kentucky to gain parity with surrounding states.There have been signs of improvement in Kentucky education in recent years.

Since 1999, Kentucky students have shown across-the-board improvement in reading and math, based on higher scores in the Commonwealth Accountability Testing System, or CATS.Kentucky fourth- and eighth-grade reading scores have been outperforming the national average. In math, the Kentucky scores have improved but lag behind the national average.“In math, we've got a lot of work to do, and we know that,” said Lisa Gross, a state Department of Education spokeswoman.Scores on the American College Test improved slightly for Kentucky high school seniors who started college this fall, but the state average of 20.7 was below the 21.2 national average.

Still, Marion County schools Superintendent Roger Marcum worries Kentucky has lost momentum of the early to mid-1990s, when he said KERA put the state at the national forefront.“Since that time, we have not been progressing,” he said. “And anytime you are not progressing, you're usually going backward.”

Marcum agrees the current state budget was the best in some time for education, but said much of the additional money went for salary increases, health care and retirement benefits.

Improved pay and benefits are important to retain and attract teachers, he said, but added, “To what extent does that provide services for children?”

Marcum said he considers education at a crossroads in Kentucky, and that policymakers need to restore state funding to levels in the years right after KERA was written.“We're either going to begin to move forward again, or we're going to continue to go backward. And we can't afford that,” he said. “Our kids have one opportunity at a quality education. Once they pass through school, if they don't get it, guess what, they never will.”

This from the Murray Ledger & Times.

Covington Board member speaks out against Stumbo

The Cincinnati Post reports:

A Covington school board member is speaking out against the effort of the state's highest law enforcement officer to unseat him.

Paul Mullins, elected to the Covington school board in November, planned a statement this morning outside the Covington headquarters of the Lunsford/Stumbo campaign slate, on which Kentucky Attorney General Greg Stumbo is running for lieutenant governor.

On March 22, Stumbo filed suit in Kenton Circuit Court to have Mullins removed from office.
The issue is that at the time of his election, Mullins drove a bus for Covington schools and did not give up that job until about a month after the November election...

[Covington Superintendent Jack Moreland] said Mullins has acknowledged publicly that a school board employee told him before the election that he would need to resign as a bus driver before the election.

"Paul Mullins is a good man, I hate that this all happened the way that it did," Moreland said.

And this from the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Covington Schools, City Commission to Meet

School district and city leaders see the public meeting as a chance to update each other on issues that affect both.

Chief among them is the city's strategic plan for residential and commercial development and its impact on the tax base, which directly affects the school district.

The school board and Superintendent Jack Moreland will update the city on its ongoing plans to increase parental involvement in school life and its early childhood development programs.

"I know it's the desire of the board, and the commission, to strengthen the relationship with the other," Moreland said. "If both don't succeed, neither succeeds."