The GOOD! The BAD! And the UGLY!!!

The annual School Report Card on school and district performance and accountability has been publicly available since last Friday. Over the past week, I have been reviewing the data to find the good news and the areas for improvement. Of course, the terrific news is the increase in our college/career ready rates ­ 20 percent in 3 years ­ and the results from our first year with cohort graduation rate ­86 percent. However, there are many areas for improvement.

We are not improving proficiency in math and reading (combined reading and math proficiency rates) as fast as we need to. Also, our various No Child Left Behind student groups are not improving as much as we need them to. Here are some summary numbers:

            –Combined reading and math gap groups for elementary
               schools – we improved in 7/8 groups

            –Combined reading and math gap groups for middle schools                       we improved in 8/8 groups

            –Combined reading and math gap groups for high schools –                        we only improved in 2/8 groups

Why the low performance in high school? This was a result of having only one math test at the high school level. We only test Algebra II for proficiency and gap group purposes. In 2012, we had 40,628 students take Algebra II and in 2013, we had 44,117 students take Algebra II. This increase of over 3,500 students had an negative impact on our high school math proficiency and gap scores.

Reading Gap Group Scores

          –Elementary schools – 2/8 improved

          –Middle schools – 8/8 improved

          –High schools – 6/8 improved

Math Gap Group Scores

          –Elementary schools – 8/8 improved

                  –Middle schools – 5/8 improved

                  –High schools – 1/8 improved

Writing Gap Group Scores

                 –Elementary schools – 8/8 improved

                  –Middle schools – 6/8 improved

                 – High schools – 7/8 improved

Overall in reading, math and writing, gap group scores improved in 51/72 cases which is 71 percent of gap groups. Clearly, we have concerns with elementary reading and middle/high school math. While we can explain a drop in high school math due to the increased number of test takers, it is imperative that we figure out how to support all students in meeting Algebra 2 expectations at the high school level. Also, the foundation for all learning is elementary reading and if our students are not progressing in reading at the elementary level, then we will see declining performance throughout their school careers.

All in all, we are making progress with the implementation of our Kentucky Core Academic Standards. The strong improvements in college/career-readiness and strong performance of our cohort graduation rate are indications of our strong interventions with high school students through transition courses, dual credit, credit recovery, and numerous others. However, our long term success in helping every child reach college/career-readiness upon graduation depends heavily on our ability to improve proficiency in reading, math and writing in grades 3-8. While we made improvement in 71 percent of the gap groups, we did not meet our expectations for improvement.

As a result, I am asking our KDE team to revisit our proficiency and gap plans for improvement and to develop specific Response to Intervention strategies and professional learning opportunities that are proven to work. This will impact districts and schools since every district and school must write improvement plans to address lack of progress with gap groups in reaching proficiency in reading, math and writing.

Soon parents will be receiving individual score reports for their children. It is critical that parents review the reports and see if their child has reached the proficient or distinguished level in reading, math and writing. A student in grades 3-8 and in high school courses that has reached proficient/distinguished is on target to reach college/career-readiness by graduation. If your student is not at the proficient or distinguished level, you should not panic since many children will take longer to reach these higher expectations. Also, it may take students 3-5 years to gain the background knowledge and skills required by the Kentucky Core Academic Standards that they may have missed in earlier grades. However, you should have a conversation with your child’s teacher about what actions you can take as a parent to support your child’s teacher and help your child at home.

Reaching college/career ready requires collaboration between student, school and parent. All three must take responsibility and be accountable for the results.

Testing Accommodations: Changes to Benefit Students

The Kentucky Board of Education (KBE) recently approved changes in 703 KAR 5:070, the regulation related to testing accommodations for students with disabilities. Due to the legislative process, these changes will not take place until the 2012-13 state assessments. The most controversial change in accommodations was the elimination of adult or technology-based readers for the Kentucky reading tests. There were three major reasons for this decision.

1. Validity – Kentucky is changing its state assessments this year, and the reading test for 2012 and beyond will be a decoding and comprehension assessment. If we allow adult or technology-based readers on the reading test, then we are invalidating the construct of the test, and we would have to invalidate the assessment scores of any student provided with a reader. Allowing readers on a decoding and comprehension test turns the test into a listening comprehension test.

2. More than 42 percent of special education students in Kentucky were allowed readers on the reading test in 2011. This number has grown steadily since the enactment of the Kentucky Education Reform Act. Schools and teachers are under great pressure to produce proficient scores on state and federal assessments. By allowing the use of a reader, we have provided a negative incentive to help students with disabilities learn to read. It is the goal of special education to help students become independent readers so they can be successful in college, military and/or the workplace.

3. 2009’s Senate Bill 1 mandates national comparisons. Kentucky’s performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) could be questioned due to the large number of students who are provided readers. Students who are provided readers on state assessments are exempted from the NAEP assessments. NAEP allows a state to exempt up to 15 percent of its disabled students; however, in Kentucky 58.2 percent of the 8th-grade disabled students and 53.1 percent of the 4th-grade disabled students were excluded from 2011 NAEP reading tests. Therefore, the NAEP results could be questioned, and in the future, states that have large percentages of exempted students will come under increasing scrutiny.

Moving forward, it is essential to provide teachers and students with the levels of support needed to help more students become independent readers. While the KBE action does eliminate readers for state assessments on reading, readers will continue to be allowed for mathematics, social studies and science assessments, since those are tests of content and not reading. Also, daily instructional practice is not impacted by the change. Teachers certainly will continue to utilize readers with students during daily instruction as they move to transition students to independent reading.

Some national organizations have questioned Kentucky’s decision; however, once they realize that Kentucky changed the assessment to a reading assessment and Kentucky’s decision is in alignment with recommendations from the National Assessment Governing Board, then it is clear that the Kentucky decision was based on research and ensuring validity of assessments.

See information on the changes to state regulation 703 KAR 5:070 made by the KBE at its December 2011 meeting here.

Common Core State Standards

This week, Kentucky took bold steps toward improving education outcomes for the future of our Commonwealth – our children.

Gov. Steve Beshear enabled Kentucky’s participation in the development of Common Core State Standards with his signature last year on an agreement that states develop common core standards. This collaborative effort of 51 states and territories, many national organizations, the National Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers, Achieve, ACT, ETS and others signaled a major step in placing America back in the front of educational attainment in the world.

By any measure you care to review, our education system has continued to achieve; however, we have been outpaced by most of the industrialized world. We no longer lead the world in high school graduates or postsecondary graduates, and on most international assessments ,our student achievement scores place our education system well below the international average. There are many causes of this change in our relative position; however, the most obvious is that the rest of the world finally caught on to America’s advantage – education.

Our state leadership recognized that Kentucky needed to not only compare districts and schools in Kentucky to each other, but also recognized the need for international and national comparisons. If Singapore outperforms U.S. students in mathematics, then we need to look at what they are doing in Singapore. When we looked, we found what teachers have been telling us for years. We were expecting too much to be taught. This meant that teachers covered material rather than helping every child master the material. Our focus on multiple-choice testing has led us to actually “dumb down” the curriculum and assess mostly recall and short-term memory items. Our practices across education in Kentucky and throughout the U.S. focused more on “gaming” the testing and accountability system rather than really focusing on student mastery of high-level material.

This week, the Kentucky Board of Education, Council on Postsecondary Education and Education Professional Standards Board came together to signal the change in direction as required by Senate Bill 1 and the Common Core State Standards movement. While this is a bold move, it will not have any impact on classrooms unless we continue to engage teachers and college faculty in the next steps.

During the review of the Common Core Standards, hundreds of college and P-12 faculty were involved in the review. Comments from Kentucky were widely utilized by the national writing teams. The next steps now must include every mathematics and language arts teacher in Kentucky. We have a deployment plan that will engage selected faculty this summer and then engage all math and language arts teachers during the 2010-11 school year.

We are scheduling a statewide summit in early April to roll out the plan, and we will then keep the public and legislative leaders informed of our progress through a Web-based project management plan. The plan ensures the level of engagement, professional development and public awareness that will be necessary to make certain every parent and every businessperson in Kentucky knows why we are implementing the Common Core Standards. The main reason – our children. A young person who graduates from a Kentucky high school should know that he/she is prepared for college and/or career based on his/her choice. We must eliminate the need for high school graduates to pay for remediation courses for which they do not receive college credit.

The responsibility will be a shared responsibility. Teachers must address the needs of ALL students, students must be held accountable for individual progress, and parents must be involved in supporting schools and their children. The future is in all of our hands, and my few months in Kentucky have convinced me that Kentucky teachers, students and parents can rise to challenge.

You can see more information about the historic meeting on Feb. 10 here.