Educational Progress Worth Celebrating

Sometimes when we’re in the midst of the hard work of improving schools, it is easy to forget how far Kentucky has come.

The state – all of us – has invested in better schools in the past two decades. And the investment is paying off in students who are better prepared than they have ever been.

Over the past 20 years, Kentucky has moved to the middle of states in academic achievement. We’re continuing to move upward. At the same time, other states that didn’t focus on schools like we did have moved steadily downward.

Kentucky’s progress is worth celebrating. Our educators deserve considerable praise for their effort, as do our elected leaders for staying the course on better schools.

But that course is getting tougher. While our students have been achieving far more, and while they look better when compared to students in other states, the rest of the world has not stood still. Indeed, students in a number of other countries have been achieving at far higher rates than students in the United States.

The world for our students is much different than it was just a few years ago. To be competitive for today’s jobs, young adults will have to command as much knowledge and skills as their peers not just in other states but those in other countries.

Today’s economy is global. What happens around the world – from energy prices to interest rates to technology breakthroughs – affects us quickly here. The Kentucky coal that used to be sold in our region now moves across the world; indeed, a new deal will ship $7 billion of Kentucky coal to India.

These days, the best predictor of individual economic success is the quality of his or her education. None of us has lived in a time where education has been so important, not just to individuals but also to communities and states. At least in Kentucky, we have come to understand and act upon that reality. This is why the state has adopted higher academic standards for our students and new tests to measure their progress.

Our goals have increased to reflect that new international reality. Instead of demanding proficiency in just the basics of education, we’re now expecting to get students to be ready to keep learning beyond high school; to have the knowledge and skills that make them ready for college or today’s workplace.

Our students are as smart as any in the world, and we are now expecting more of them. We didn’t do it arbitrarily. We did it because these are the standards of the world and we want Kentucky students to be competitive.

Now that we’ve released the first results from our new tests, we’re seeing that we have a ways to go. The numbers of students who had been distinguished or proficient went down. This isn’t because they aren’t making progress, it is because we are measuring them against higher standards. We’ve raised the height of the basket, lengthened the football field, made the golf course longer, pushed back the outfield fences.

It would certainly be more enjoyable for me to keep the tests the way they were and see more Kentucky students get higher scores. It also would be wrong. We do our students no favors when we tell them they are ready to succeed in the world when they are not.

And we want them to succeed.

We expected the test scores to be lower, and we’ve been saying so. But the scores are jarring nevertheless to students and their parents, to teachers and principals, to taxpayers and to elected officials.

The new test scores can’t be compared to the old ones; they measure different things.

But we know that we are making the kind of progress that matters – more of our students are leaving high school better prepared to succeed in the world. Our remediation rates in higher education are getting lower. Our ACT scores are steadily moving upward. We have moved increasingly closer to the national average, and I suspect we will surpass it in a few years if we continue to stay focused.

The scores we’ve released this week are lower than we want, but readiness is going up. And that is something Kentucky should be quite proud of.

Adequate Yearly Progress – The Rest of the Story

Over the last few months, I have been working at the state and national level on developing accountability models for schools, districts and states that might help us replace the existing No Child Left Behind (NCLB) model called Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).

While AYP helped us focus on ALL children, the measure had numerous flaws. In Kentucky, we have been developing a new accountability system per requirements of 2009’s Senate Bill 1. On September 23, we will release reports that demonstrate our proposed model that focuses on college and career readiness, proficiency, growth and closing gaps. We feel this model is much better than the singular focus on proficiency that NCLB provided. Parts of the following paragraphs come from previous blogs I have written about AYP and will help readers understand my concerns with AYP.

As a baseball player, you want to get a hit every time you bat. What if you got a hit 9 out 10 times you went to bat, but your stats only listed you simply as a ‘failure?’ What if your football team won 10 out of 11 games, but you were still told you failed? What if you took a 100-item test and answered 99 items correctly, yet when you received your grade, it’s a large, red ‘F?’

Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? That’s because it is! However, this is exactly what the No Child Left Behind measure known as Adequate Yearly Progress does to schools.

As an educator, I can’t deny that the purpose of NCLB is very laudable. We all want every child to be successful. The measure of AYP was never intended to label schools as failures, nor have teachers felt like they are failures. However, each year around this time, news reports all over the state and nation come out about NCLB and how schools have failed to make the grade or how schools have come up short on the NCLB scale.

While the goal of NCLB is certainly a noble one, the creators of this legislation have failed to properly communicate its true, albeit very complicated, meaning. As Commissioner of Education in Kentucky, I want to help our community better understand this thing called Adequate Yearly Progress.

Every school has something called ‘subgroups’ of students. These subgroups are defined by the federal government, not schools. Possible subgroups include students with disabilities; African-American students; students who are economically disadvantaged; students who speak, read and write with limited English proficiency; and others. Each subgroup of students must meet both reading and mathematics goals at a level defined by the state. Each subgroup therefore becomes a goal that each school must work to meet.

Some schools have as many as 25 subgroups (goals), and some schools have as few as three subgroups (goals), depending upon the makeup of the school’s student population. Schools that have higher socio-economic levels and less diversity among their students have fewer subgroups and thus have fewer goals to meet.

Schools and districts all across Kentucky are being labeled as failures even though they may reach 80-95 percent of their goals. Ridiculous -- and most parents understand that this is ridiculous. Recent PDK Gallup polls show that the majority of parents and the public do not think NCLB measures have improved schools.
As commissioner, I am extremely proud of the dedication and hard work of teachers and administrators in Kentucky. I am extremely proud of the community partners who are helping our schools reach higher levels of performance. Teachers and staff members deserve a pat on the back and encouragement from the community.

No Child Left Behind is coming up for re-authorization in the next year or so. I encourage all citizens to help teachers and staff communicate to our politicians that we support helping children be successful; however, we need other ways to announce the results of our efforts and the progress, not failure, of our schools. In Kentucky, the requirements of Senate Bill 1 will serve as a model for the nation as we consider reauthorization of NCLB.

Vision for Education Reform in Kentucky

Governor Beshear will soon be appointing up to seven new members for the Kentucky Board of Education. The Governor also has appointed a Transforming Education in Kentucky (TEK) Task Force to make recommendations prior to the 2011 legislative session. Also, KDE is working hard to implement 2009’s Senate Bill 1 (SB 1), which requires a new accountability system, internationally benchmarked standards, formative and diagnostic assessments, student growth measures, and numerous other far-reaching initiatives.

I have started the process of engaging all advisory councils in the dialogue concerning a new accountability system and strategic plan for the Kentucky Board of Education. The board will hold a strategic retreat prior to its June meeting. The following information is a summary of what I have been proposing to our advisory groups and will provide to the board as a guide for the development of a revised accountability system and strategic plan.

The key to our success in transforming education in Kentucky will reside in our ability to focus on a few goals with a few strategies that are done with precision and fidelity. These few goals will focus on the vision of every child proficient and prepared for success. This vision will be measured by indicators of proficiency, growth and closing gaps among student groups.

Proficiency will be measured by the cohort graduation rate and our comparative position among states. Growth will be measured by the increases in our annual percentage of high school graduates who are prepared for college and career as compared against other states. Closing gaps will be measured by the decreases in gaps for the graduation and readiness rates among student groups in Kentucky as compared against other states.

The ultimate measure for the vision of Kentucky education will be informed by the following measures:
- National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Proficiency, Growth and Gap rates – 4th- and 8th-grade reading and mathematics
- Educational Planning and Assessment System (EPAS) Proficiency, Growth and Gap rates – 8th-grade EXPLORE, 10th-grade PLAN and 11th-grade ACT

The Kentucky Board of Education will set biannual goals for each of the measures to reach and maintain a top 20 in the nation ranking.

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 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Also, the priorities, strategies and indicators are based on state guidance provided by SB 1 (2009), SB 168 (2002), SB 130 (2006) and other state statutes. The priorities are Next Generation Learners, Next Generation Professionals, Next Generation Support Systems and Next Generation Schools and Districts.

Comments and suggestions concerning this vision for the new accountability system are very much appreciated. We will have community forums and focus groups as part of the Governor’s TEK Task Force in August, and all advisory councils (parents, teachers, business, superintendents, principals, students and others) will have opportunity for input.

Our board has a vision of ALL children proficient and prepared for success. While visions are great, they have no meaning unless you have measures and accountability for those.