Progress in Persistently Low-Achieving Schools

At the Kentucky Board of Education meeting this week, Associate Commissioner Dewey Hensley and the District 180 team provided an update on the persistently low-achieving (PLA) schools identified in 2010.

We are very excited to see excellent progress in year one. While one year of data does not make a trend, we are anticipating a more detailed evaluation report from the University of Kentucky in coming months. These data suggest that the districts, schools, principals, teachers and students are dedicated to improvement in student learning outcomes. These data also suggest that Kentucky and districts stay the course in working with PLAs.

Our No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waiver request must address the issue of “priority schools,” which are defined the same as the PLAs, so I anticipate that the Kentucky waiver request will have an excellent story to share with the reviewers.

Here are some highlights from the report on PLA schools.

Data Summary: 90 percent of the schools identified as “Persistently Low-Achieving Schools — Cohort One” demonstrated statistically significant increases in the percentage of students scoring proficient or distinguished in math. Ninety percent of the PLA Cohort One schools also demonstrated statistically significant increases in reading.




* The average gain for all the PLA Cohort Schools combined in mathematics was 16 percent.
* The average gain for all the PLA Cohort Schools combined in reading was 10.33 percent.
* The combined average growth for all PLA schools was 13.16 percent.
* Kentucky’s overall math proficient/distinguished percentage stayed statistically the same.
* Kentucky’s overall gain for reading proficient/distinguished was 1.06 percent.
* Averages and gains disaggregated by turnaround model employed:
o Schools using the Transformation Model posted average increase of 14.43 percent in math and an average increase of 7.02 percent in reading.
o Schools using the Re-Staffing Model posted average increases of 16 percent in math and an average increase of 12.27 percent in reading.

Data Inferences

* Although the overall gains were larger in mathematics, that content area lags behind literacy across the state.
* The present Educational Recovery system, with a team of three Educational Recovery Specialists and an Educational Recovery Director in each region, seems an effective means for increasing achievement due to the fact that 100 percent of schools showed improvement in at least one of the two content areas.
* Rapid rises in achievement are possible in larger schools.
* The “team approach” to support PLAs has paid dividends for our investment in achievement.
* There is much to do — some schools gained, but had fewer students tested due to dropouts and enrollment changes.
* Focus on achievement — whether internally or externally motivated — is a good trait.

Productivity and Efficiency in Education

The words in the title are very foreign to educators, and to some educators, they raise concerns that we are trying to be more like the business world. Let me say up front that education is an extremely complex social institution that is impacted by many factors other than the classroom. I do, however, believe that educators can certainly improve operational processes to make them more productive and efficient and, in turn, invest the savings in support for classrooms.

I also believe that classroom teachers can improve the learning results in their classrooms by improving key learning processes. The key processes such as instruction and student engagement must constantly be reviewed and improved in light of the student learning results.

Last week in my blog, I talked about the “new normal” that educators are facing. This new normal requires us to do much more to help more students achieve at higher levels and to achieve these results with fewer dollars than we have had in the past. I mentioned that I would be focusing this year on benchmarking, productivity and efficiency. This blog provides access to some recent articles and resources that may help readers gain a better understanding of the discussion that is taking place across education and government circles.

Of course, education is not alone in this issue of productivity. We are joined by health care, government, non-profit and all business sectors. Our challenge in education is not replicate business efforts, but to create sector specific language and improvement efforts.

This week, I reviewed a new report from the Center for American Progress: Return on Educational Investment: A District by District Evaluation of US Education Productivity. The link to the report is http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/01/pdf/dwwroi.pdf.

While there have been many efforts over the years to define “return on investment,” productivity, efficiency and outcomes of education, it is extremely difficult to accomplish due to the complexity of education. This does not mean that we can ignore this issue as educators. Given the difficult economic situation that most states and school districts are facing, this is a time when we as educators must have a better understanding of terms like productivity and efficiency. A quote from the report provides insight into the debate:

"Our nation’s school system has for too long failed to ensure that education funding consistently promotes strong student achievement. After adjusting for inflation, education spending per student has nearly tripled over the past four decades. But while some states and districts have spent their additional dollars wisely—and thus shown significant increases in student outcomes—overall student achievement has largely remained flat. And besides Luxembourg, the United States spends more per student than any of the 65 countries that participated in a recent international reading assessment, and while Estonia and Poland scored at the same level as the United States on the exam, the United States spent roughly $60,000 more to educate each student to age 15 than either nation."

For additional information on quality, continuous improvement, productivity, efficiency and similar terms in education, I offer some of my favorite resources.

Baldrige National Quality Program -- http://www.nist.gov/baldrige
Readers may be most interested in the education criteria and the award recipients from education.

American Society for Quality -- http://asq.org/education/index.html

American Productivity Quality Council -- http://www.apqceducation.org

All three of these resources offer a number of free materials for educators. Educators will need to make their own decisions about purchases of products. I am not endorsing any particular product.

Look for more resources and links in the coming months. While I will continue to focus on asking legislators to fully fund SEEK and Flexible Focus Funds, educators also must look to productivity and efficiency for savings. I am excited about the work being done with energy management in most school districts in partnership with the Kentucky School Boards Association. This model is exactly the type of approach that educators can use in other operational processes.

Priorities for School and District Accountability

Last week I shared the vision for the state strategic plan and the goals and measures for the state. This week, I am sharing the vision for a new accountability system and school/district report cards.

There will be four strategic priorities with specific strategies and annual indicators of progress. These priorities, strategies and indicators are based on federal guidance provided by Race to the Top, State Fiscal Stabilization Funds and proposed reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The priorities, strategies and indicators also are based on state guidance provided by 2009’s Senate Bill 1 , 2002’s Senate Bill 168 (KRS 158.649) , 2006’s Senate Bill 130 (KRS 158.6453) and other state statutes.

Over the coming year, we will begin working with advisory groups to more clearly define the district and school indicators that are reflected in the listing below. There is much work to do in defining the new common core assessments that are due by 2012. We must define growth to the student level and match with classrooms and schools. Also, we must develop an index that reflects school and district performance in closing gaps among groups of students. Perhaps once of largest challenges is clearly defining what “career-ready” means.

We are excited to announce that the Teacher and Principal Working Conditions Survey will be initiated in the spring of 2011, and Program Reviews will be piloted in 2010-11. With support from Race to the Top funding, we hope to be able to develop clear definitions of effective teachers and leaders with the support of steering committees comprised of teachers, leaders and other partners.

Finally, we will revise district and school report cards to match the indicators in the strategic plan.

This is multi-year work and will require a tremendous amount of collaboration between all partners. However, with fewer priorities (four), very clear strategies (six) and indicators that are aligned between state and federal requirements through our strategic plan, I feel very confident that we can meet and exceed the expectations of Kentucky citizens.

Through Senate Bill 1, citizens have mandated that we must have a greater percentage of high school graduates prepared for college and career. Failure to meet this goal impacts our state economy; however, even more importantly, failure to meet this goal impacts the lives of our children.

Proposed Strategic Plan Components for 2010-2014 Kentucky P-12 Education


Strategic Priority: Next-Generation Learners
Strategy: Common Core Standards and Balanced Assessments
Indicators: proficiency, growth and gap rates in literacy, numeracy, science and social studies on common core assessment; career readiness

Strategic Priority: Next-Generation Professionals
Strategy: Effective Teachers and Leaders
Indicators: percent of effective teachers; percent of effective leaders

Strategic Priority: Next-Generation Support Systems
Strategy: Data systems that Inform Instruction and Policy Decisions
Indicators: Working Conditions Survey; Program Reviews

Strategic Priority: Next-Generation Schools and Districts
Strategies: Turn Around Low-Achieving Schools; Create Innovative Schools and Programs for Next-Generation Learning
Indicators: effective schools and districts per state report card

Guidelines for School Improvement

School Improvement Grant proposed guidelines were recently posted on the Federal Register. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is using the federal Title I programs to focus on low-performing schools.

The administration is certainly putting the money behind the program -- a $125 million investment in FY 2007, an investment of $545 million in FY 2009, PLUS another $3 billion for efforts that focus on addressing low-performing schools. This infusion of funding and recent changes to Kentucky testing programs will require KDE to review our strategies for addressing low-performing schools. Let me share just a few highlights of the proposed guidelines.

Low-Performing School Identification – Kentucky will have to change its methods for identifying low-performing schools to a focus on the federal definitions. The proposed guidelines are as follows:
Tier 1 schools – this is the lowest-achieving five percent of Title I schools in improvement, corrective action or restructuring in the state. Funds must be utilized in this category first.
Tier 2 schools – these are low-achieving middle or high schools that qualify for Title I programs, but are not classified as Title I schools.
Tier 3 schools – those Title I schools in improvement, corrective action or restructuring that are not in the lowest five percent of Title I schools.

The dollars behind this effort to schools and districts range from a minimum of $50,000 to a maximum of $500,000 for three school years each. The funds must be spent within four options that are being proposed.
Option 1 – Turnaround model : includes replacing the principal and at least 50 percent of staff with a new governance structure and new instructional program.
Option 2 – Restart model: requires closing the school and reopening under a charter school management or other educational management organization.
Option 3 – Close school model: simply means that the school is closed and students sent to another school.
Option 4 – Transformation model: four very specific components with 11 non-negotiable standards.

This program, along with our Race to the Top application, can provide a new approach to supporting low-performing schools. The program requires academic goals that must be met within the three-year period and annual progress goals.

Over the coming months, I will be working with KDE staff, the Kentucky Board of Education, legislators and other interested parties to focus on our statewide strategy to address low-performing schools. A child’s opportunity to attend a high-performing school should not depend on the family’s zip code. We must work to continue to raise achievement and close academic performance gaps. Our children deserve no less.