College/career-readiness for ALL – Part I

As I reflect on the last six years of working with educators in Kentucky, one of the most successful strategies has been the focus on college- and career-readiness.

Recently, the Education Commission of the States recognized the Kentucky Board of Education for the innovation of the Unbridled Learning accountability model, which has college and career readiness as a primary focus. The board’s recognition highlights the terrific job that our educators in Kentucky have done over the last six years helping more students reach college readiness.

The focus on college readiness was a result of Senate Bill 1 in 2009. At that time, only 30 percent of our high school graduates were able to enter credit bearing courses at the postsecondary level without the need for remediation. That number came from ACT results, the only measure we had at the time.

Thanks to a strong collaboration with our postsecondary partners under the leadership of Bob King at the Council of Postsecondary Education, Kentucky colleges developed several other measures of college readiness. Kentucky colleges expanded the use of the ACT Compass and the Kentucky-developed placement tests for math and language arts – KYOTE.

Many of our Kentucky colleges offered college remedial courses at high schools so that seniors who had not met the ACT benchmarks for college readiness were able to successfully complete the remediation during their senior year at no cost to parents. By utilizing multiple measures of college readiness, high schools and colleges were able to help more students reach the postsecondary-defined college-readiness levels for language arts and math.

Kentucky has been recognized nationally for this work in many publications due to the strong collaboration between K-12 and postsecondary. It is critical to note that the measures for college readiness were not defined by K-12. ALL measures for college readiness were defined and agreed upon by Kentucky colleges. What this means is that any student who reaches college readiness as defined by Kentucky colleges on the ACT, Compass, and/or KYOTE can be placed in a credit-bearing college course upon being enrolled in the college. Since Kentucky began this work, the college readiness rates have moved from 30 percent to more than 60 percent.

It is estimated that students and parents have been able to save more than $1,000 per student by avoiding non-credit bearing remedial course tuition at the college level. With almost 15,000 more students reaching college readiness for the class of 2015 compared to the class of 2009, Kentucky families have realized an estimated savings of almost $15 million. On top of that, high school graduates who reach college readiness levels are more likely to return to college for a second year, take more credit-bearing courses, and have a higher GPA.

I am extremely honored to have worked in a state with such a focus on student success. The partnership between K-12 and postsecondary is a model for all states. Kentucky teachers are the envy of the nation. Kentucky students and families have benefitted. Thanks for letting me be a part of such important work.

Next week, I will focus on the tremendous work done in career readiness.

Community collaboration stretches preschool dollars

This week, Chief of Staff Tommy Floyd, who represents the Kentucky Department of Education on the Governor’s Early Childhood Advisory Council, is my guest blogger. The topic is preschool and how to serve more children who could benefit from a quality early learning experience with the limited funding available.

Terry Holliday, Ph.D.

Education Commissioner

In the coming weeks, the Kentucky Department of Education will be releasing results from the Kindergarten readiness screen of students beginning school this year. Superintendents know how important this data is to students and their future. Children who start behind in school may stay behind. Yet, high quality preschool can make a difference.

We are fortunate this year that Gov. Steve Beshear and the state legislature provided districts with additional funding for preschool. That additional funding, however, came with an expansion of eligibility guidelines, which means many districts also saw their preschool enrollment increase this fall.

With limited resources, many superintendents are asking: How can I stretch my state preschool funding so that more students will be ready when they start school?”

Terry Tolan, executive director of the Governor’s Office of Early Childhood, and Rick Hulefeld, founder and executive director of Children, Inc. in northern Kentucky, recently shared with me a model that some districts are using that has allowed them to serve more preschoolers – for less – through collaboration with community programs like Head Start and STARS-rated early childhood centers.

Here’s one example: a private early childhood center in a district serves 18 children in the 4-year-old classroom, 12 of the children are from families whose income is at or below 160 percent of the federal poverty line. The school system places a half-time early childhood teacher in the center, and the early childhood center provides the half-time assistant. The school district would be reimbursed for the 12 children. The early learning center would still receive its usual child care reimbursement and parent co-pay.

How does this stretch the district’s preschool dollars? The district is not paying for a half- day teacher assistant. The district is not retrofitting and/or equipping another classroom or paying for janitor and/or utilities. It also may result in reduced transportation costs because parents may drop off and/or pick up their child before and after work. Most importantly, the school district has ensured that 18 children will be ready for kindergarten not just 12.

This model also offers many more benefits:  

•  The child spends more time in the classroom, less time being
    transported.
•  There is greater alignment between the two halves of the day.
•  The child is in a full-day, full-year program that hopefully is more
    effective with the presence of the school district’s teacher.
•  The teacher has more contact with the family through the assistant
    teacher. 
•  The transitions between home, school and child care seamless –
    a big support for working families.
•  The early learning center, which is typically open more than 10 hours a
    day benefits by reducing its staffing costs.
•  Other forms of sharing between the school and care provider may result,
    for example, around training.

It is important to note that many of the benefits listed still occur if the partnership takes place in the district’s classrooms with the district providing the half-day teacher and the early childhood organization providing the assistant and the wrap-around care.

Using a mixed model for delivering preschool will result in districts serving more children at reduced cost and, even more importantly, improve outcomes for children in the district.

As superintendents begin developing their 2015-16 budgets, I encourage them to consider this model and begin identifying potential early childhood partners in their community that may be willing to join with schools in an effort to ensure more students are ready for learning on their first day of school.

Feedback is critical to success

Kentucky began implementing a new state accountability system in 2011-12. The system is called Unbridled Learning. It was built on the requirements of Senate Bill 1 (2009) and is used to meet both state accountability requirements as well as the federal requirements of the Elementary and Secondary Education/No Child Left Behind Act.

The system has been very successful in pushing improvements in the percentage of students who graduate from high school ready for college and career. The system has also been successful in increasing high school graduation rates and the percentage of students who are ready for school when they enter kindergarten. We have also started to see significant improvement in areas such as ACT, grades 3-6 reading and math and closing of achievement gaps for several of our student groups.

While we have seen success in some areas, we have not improved in 7th- and 8th-grade math and language arts achievement and we have not improved as quickly as needed to close the achievement gap and boost student performance on high school end-of-course tests.

We originally committed to a three-year window for implementation of the Unbridled Learning model before we made any significant changes. School year 2013-14 completed that three year cycle and we are tentatively scheduled to share results publicly on October 2.

This summer, we began gathering feedback from our stakeholders so that, at the October Kentucky Board of Education (KBE) meeting, we could provide recommendations for any changes to the Unbridled Learning system. We have met with advisory groups representing students, parents, business, teachers, principals, school boards and numerous advocacy groups. We had an online tool for the public to provide feedback also. This week we gathered superintendents from all of our 173 school districts and provided them with the results of the feedback and polled the superintendents on their support for the numerous recommendations we had received.

What happens now? Next month, the KBE will review all of the feedback and the results of the superintendent survey on recommendations. Kentucky Department of Education staff will take direction from KBE on what changes need to be made to the accountability system and will modify existing regulatory language to reflect those changes.  In December, staff will present proposed revisions of the regulatory language for a first reading. Second reading of regulatory changes will occur in February and, if approved, the regulatory changes will start moving through the legislative review process. There are many opportunities for public comment along the way. If the revised regulation becomes law, the changes will not take effect until the 2015-16 school year. School districts will continue to operate under the existing Unbridled Learning accountability model for the 2014-15 school year.

This process sounds complicated and, at times, it can be confusing to teachers, parents, and administrators. However, it is critical to engage all stakeholders in gaining feedback. The strength of our Kentucky education improvements has been and will continue to be collaboration and communication with all stakeholders.

Kentucky education results will continue to improve as long as we listen to concerns from all groups and make improvements. Feedback and action on the feedback are critical to the success of our students, schools and districts, and meeting our goal of college/career-readiness of all students.

Collaborative Work to Help the Teaching Profession

This week I was struck by what is happening in Chicago with the teacher strike, contrasted against the collaborative work going on in Kentucky. Over the past few days, Kentucky was very much focused on elevating the teaching profession. The Prichard Committee has launched a task force to look closely at improving teacher effectiveness. This task force has been charged with looking at teacher preparation, professional development, recruiting and retaining great teachers, and supporting teachers. Hats off to Executive Director Stu Silberman and the task force for looking at these issues in a thoughtful way and engaging teachers in the process.

Also this week, I dropped by to visit with my Teacher Advisory Committee, which was working with our professional development task force. This task force is an outgrowth of our selection as a model state to develop guidelines for professional development and support of teachers as they implement the Common Core State Standards. I was excited to see the group working very hard to develop key recommendations for professional development that I hope will in turn provide the framework for legislation for the 2013 session.

Another group that I am working with is the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP). This group is developing accreditation standards for teacher preparation programs. I am co-chairing the accountability and public reporting committee. Our challenge is to develop key outcome measures for teacher preparation programs, levels of accreditation, public reporting and transparency guidelines, and annual performance requirements.

The national conversation about teachers and the teaching profession was certainly highlighted through the Chicago teacher strike. One of the key issues leading to the strike was the proposed teacher evaluation system that would include some measure of student performance. In Kentucky, we have been working with teachers and other stakeholders for almost two years to develop a statewide teacher effectiveness system.

The goal of our system is not teacher dismissal but teacher professional growth. In the past, our teacher evaluation systems have been narrowly focused without a lot of feedback and support for teacher professional growth. Our proposed system would greatly improve the feedback that teachers receive during the evaluation cycle and also provide access to the best professional development in the world, customized to meet the needs of the individual teacher and thus meet the needs of students in the teacher’s classroom. I was provided with an early look at our comprehensive software system that will provide teachers and administrators with the tools to bring our proposed system to fruition.

I am thankful to be in Kentucky and working with stakeholders who believe in collaboration to elevate and improve the teaching profession.