The Importance of Federal Flexibility

This week I had the honor of testifying before the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee at a hearing titled “No Child Left Behind: Early Lessons from State Flexibility Waivers.”

In February 2012, Kentucky was one of the first states granted a waiver from certain requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 by the U.S. Department of Education. The waiver cleared the way for the state’s new Unbridled Learning: College/Career-Readiness for All accountability system to be used for both state and federal accountability.

With this testimony, I had the opportunity to not only urge reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and explain our experience with the waiver process but also share on a national stage the great work we are doing in Kentucky and the progress we are making to ensure all our students graduate college/career ready.

Below is a transcript of my testimony before the HELP committee. Video of the full proceeding can be accessed here.

Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Testimony
Washington D.C.

February 7, 2013

Chairman Harkin, Ranking Member Alexander, and Senator Paul, thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak to the Committee today about Kentucky’s ESEA flexibility waiver. I am honored to explain to you how we are best serving the students in my state.

First, though, let me be clear that Kentucky and my fellow chiefs across the nation support ESEA reauthorization first and foremost. We feel that only reauthorization gives us the long range expectations of federal accountability and the long-term sustainability of our efforts to best serve the needs of students. With reauthorization, we can implement policies that address the requirements of the legislation with fidelity, knowing that we will not have to alter those plans for any reason other than their success in meeting the goal of getting our students to college and career readiness.

I also thank Secretary Duncan and President Obama for the opportunity to innovate and build a new college and career readiness-based assessment and accountability system in Kentucky through the ESEA waiver process that I hope will inform reauthorization efforts and highlight the value of state flexibility in federal law.

From the very beginning of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), I have been an ardent supporter of the vision of the legislation. EVERY child should reach proficiency. For too long, our schools had failed to meet the needs of many children who needed our help the most. However, as we all can agree, while the vision of NCLB was right, we lost something in the translation to details. NCLB had some unintended consequences. Among these were:

• Wide variation in standards and proficiency levels across states
• A focus on “teaching to the test”
• Loss of a balanced approach to education with reductions in the arts, physical education, science and other critical subject areas
• A focus on “bubble kids” who were close to passing state tests and not providing support for gifted/talented students or low-performing students
• Confusion of parents with different systems for state and federal accountability that often reported contradicting results

Given the challenges of implementation and the looming 2014 timeline of NCLB to reach 100 percent proficiency, the Council of Chief State School Officers convened a group of chiefs to develop a model for next generation accountability systems that would focus on college and career readiness. This group was a natural progression to the successful work of the Common Core Standards. During this time, the administration was also working on the waiver process for states who wanted to create innovative accountability systems.

The timing was right for Kentucky. In 2009, our General Assembly had unanimously passed Senate Bill 1, which required more rigorous standards, rigorous assessments, a balanced accountability system, and support for educators to implement the new system. Kentucky was one of the first states to apply for the ESEA waiver due to our state legislation.

Kentucky completed a waiver application that built on the key components of NCLB. We kept a focus on proficiency, achievement gaps, graduation rate, and annual progress. However, we moved to a more rigorous standard – college and career readiness for all students. Our state legislation had recognized the economic imperative of having more students graduate from high school that had achieved college and career readiness in addition to basic skills proficiency.

Let me highlight a few elements of our waiver request:

K-3 Program Review – This component measures every child’s readiness for kindergarten based on common readiness expectations. Through this component, we ensure early childhood providers use the information to improve services to children. Also, we ensure that schools are ready for children and help all children reach success in reading and math by the end of 3rd grade.

College and Career Readiness – Perhaps the most innovative component of our system is the partnership with business and higher education to clearly define college and career readiness and have measures in place that track progress of individual students, schools and districts. In grades 3-8, we have built an assessment system that measures college/career ready standards and reports on the progress of individual students, classrooms, schools and districts toward the goal of college/career readiness for all students. At the 8th, 10th, and 11th grade levels, we have added end-of-course assessments and independent college/career-ready assessments that provide college/career readiness measures accepted by colleges and businesses.

Balanced system – Our accountability system supports the concept of the whole child. It was very important to our General Assembly that we provide opportunities for students to excel in arts/humanities, career and technology, physical education and health, world languages, and writing/research programs. Our Program Review accountability measure uses the latest in performance-based assessments and project-based learning to measure student learning and student opportunities in these areas. This ensures we have a balanced approach to accountability rather than a limited focus on basic math and reading skills.

Subgroup performance – Kentucky continues the focus on individual subgroup performance as required by NCLB; however, due to low student counts in some schools for some subgroups, we found that many Kentucky schools were not being held accountable for closing achievement gaps. Through our new accountability system, we have ensured that ALL schools have the responsibility for closing achievement gaps through an aggregate gap group even if they have small counts for individual subgroups.  The use of the aggregate gap group allows for the inclusion of students otherwise missed due to the low number of students in a single subgroup. To make sure that individual subgroups are not being overlooked, we set ambitious performance targets for all subgroups and use these targets to drive interventions, and require that schools improve the performance of the subgroup that led to their identification.

Comparative data and transparency – Through the use of our on-line accountability school and district report card, the citizens of Kentucky are able to see how their school or district is performing compared to other schools or districts. Also, citizens are able to see the annual targets for improvement of their school and district in proficiency, gap, graduation rate, and college/career readiness.

The results from our accountability model have certainly been catching the attention of many states. With our first assessment of the Common Core Standards, we saw drops in proficiency rates of between 20 percent to 30 percent in language arts and math. However, we are not shying away from these results; in fact we embrace these as a more realistic view of the percentage of our students who are making progress toward reaching the most important goal of college and career readiness. These results also are very much in alignment with the National Assessment of Education Progress.

Additionally, we are seeing some early indications of improvement. Our graduation rates have improved and the percentage of graduates who are college and career ready has improved from a baseline of 34 percent in 2010 to 47 percent for the Class of 2012.

In closing, I again thank the committee for this opportunity to speak, and thank Secretary Duncan and President Obama for encouraging the state-level innovation that we are seeing in Kentucky and across the country.

My request to the committee is very simple. I hope you will move toward reauthorization as soon as possible to provide concrete parameters for states for improving education systems to better serve students. However, I strongly encourage the committee to provide those states that have demonstrated their commitment to accountability and college/career readiness for ALL students, through the waiver process, the ability to continue and grow that innovation through a flexible federal law and additional funding flexibility that will support states as they work to make the vision of college/career readiness for ALL students a reality.

Legislative Agenda for 2013

As legislators return next week, I want to ask superintendents, local boards and readers of this blog to contact their local legislators to push for a couple of issues.

1 – Raising the dropout age – I recently sent Governor Beshear a letter supporting this legislation. The legislation is also a priority for the Kentucky Board of Education. I hope readers will review the letter and contact their local legislator to support this important legislation.

2 – Preschool funding – This is a fairly straightforward concept and one that I know local superintendents support. We need to move from the complicated formula that has been used for preschool funding since the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) to a fairer and simpler formula.

3 – Career and Technical Education (CTE) – The Governor, through executive order, merged the Workforce Cabinet CTE program with the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) CTE program and placed the merged program under KDE. We need legislation this term to sustain this merger.

4 – Teacher/Principal Effectiveness – Last session we were able to get legislation through the House and a resolution through the Senate to implement the work of our Teacher/Principal Effectiveness committees. The session adjourned prior to the House and Senate agreeing on a compromise bill. A similar bill will be filed when this session reconvenes and we need strong support from all stakeholders to move the bill through quickly. Failure to move the bill through this term could have a negative impact on federal funds and Race to the Top grants.

Finally, I sent a letter to Governor Beshear that expresses my concern about support for our schools. I hope that readers will take time to review this letter and contact their local legislators to express concern about school funding.

Kentucky has made tremendous progress as evidenced by recent EXPLORE/PLAN scores, AP scores, ACT scores, NAEP scores, and Education Week’s Quality Counts report. However, we will not be able to maintain our progress without some restoration of funds for schools.

I am concerned about the recent announcement by the Kentucky School Boards Insurance Trust (KSBIT) and the Kentucky School Boards Association (KSBA) about the unexpected $50-60 million assessment to districts to cover shortfalls and the increased costs for districts that will come as result of having to procure new insurance coverage once KSBIT is closed.

Also, I am concerned that federal sequestration (cut of 9.2 percent) will happen in March with impact seen in the 2013-14 school budgets.

Given that this is not a budget session for our legislators should not deter readers from beginning this conversation with local legislators about additional education funding. We do anticipate discussion at some point, possibly in a special session dealing with tax reform. It is critical that education be a primary consideration of any tax reform discussion.

I hope readers will use the information in my letters to the Governor and this blog as you contact your local legislators.

Progress on a Professional Growth and Effectiveness System

This week, Kentucky made significant movement toward a statewide teacher and principal effectiveness system.

While Kentucky usually is one of the first states to implement education reform ideas, on teacher/principal effectiveness we have moved very deliberately. Why? The research in this field is developing, so there are many strategies but not many proven strategies to improve teacher/principal effectiveness systems. With the recent release of the Gates-funded Measuring Effective Teaching Project results, we are now seeing “causal” relationships between teaching and student learning. Kentucky is replicating the MET project on a state level and hopefully our work will inform the field.

Our significant progress with the teacher/principal effectiveness work has been led by a terrific team of Kentucky Department of Education educators led by Associate Commissioner Felicia Cummings Smith. They have had the honor of working with a stakeholder group that has teachers in the majority. This week, I shared the honor of working with the Teacher Effectiveness Steering Committee and have included my remarks to that group below.

By the end of the two-day meeting, the committee had made significant progress toward development of key recommendations to guide legislation and regulatory language. The Kentucky Board of Education will receive an update on this work at the February meeting. Also, we anticipate Rep. Carl Rollins filing legislation in February that reflects the work of the group; then the Kentucky Board of Education will implement the regulatory language process in April.

 Remarks to Teacher Effectiveness Steering Committee

January 23, 2013

In 2009, Senate Bill 1 gave us a new vision for education in Kentucky -- a vision that was grounded in college and career readiness for all students. About the same time, the Obama administration was moving us toward a new vision for American public education -- a vision grounded in improving America’s competitiveness in the global marketplace by improving American education. With the announcement of Race to the Top grants and eventually the No Child Left Behind waiver process, the President and Secretary of Education provided the components of the vision.

In response to these initiatives, Kentucky assembled a stakeholder group that articulated our state vision and strategies aligned to the national focus. This has become our strategic plan in Kentucky and is guiding the work of KDE, districts, schools, and classrooms. What I consider to be the most important strategy in this work is teacher effectiveness. As Commissioner of Education, I appointed this task force to develop recommendations for the Kentucky Board of Education to incorporate into proposed legislation and subsequent regulation -- with the charge to Kentucky Department of Education to implement them through the Professional Growth and Effectiveness System.

               

Many other states have done this work TO teachers. My intent was to do this work WITH teachers. While other states have moved quickly to develop models, Kentucky chose to be deliberate and involve the voice of the teacher and other stakeholders in the development of the professional growth system. There were several goals of a growth system that were considered.

1)    According to the “Widget Effect,” 99 percent of teachers in states were rated as satisfactory or above while there were significant differences in student achievement between the states. Therefore, a goal could have been to improve the distribution of teacher evaluation ratings so they would be seen as more valid and reliable.

2)   According to most national reports, the impact of the teacher on student growth and achievement is the most significant school-based factor. Therefore, a goal could have been to improve student growth and achievement.

3)    My charge to this task force was to develop a system of growth and support for teachers. By improving the observation tool, feedback to teachers for instructional growth, and providing the support for a professional learning system, then Kentucky would certainly achieve the first two goals.

 This group has done unbelievable work over the last 18-24 months. We arrive now at a point where we must complete our recommendations for the Kentucky Board of Education and move from recommendations to implementation, monitoring and improving the growth system that we developed.

Closing Achievement Gaps and NCLB Waiver

During 2011, I was working with a committee of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) to develop guidelines for next generation accountability models. The timing was good for Kentucky since Senate Bill 1 (2009) required new standards, assessments, and accountability model.

My hope in working at the state and national level was reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) with a focus on college and career readiness similar to Senate Bill 1. As it played out, reauthorization was stalled. However, President Obama and Secretary Duncan moved forward with a waiver process for states that included many of the recommendations from the CCSSO accountability committee. To date, 34 states have been approved for a waiver and several other states are asking for specific waivers.


While we appreciate the waiver process, state chiefs agree that the most stable solution is reauthorization of NCLB by Congress. Early in February, I hope to testify before a Senate committee holding hearings on the waiver process and NCLB reauthorization. I know that one of the key concerns for Congress and for advocacy groups across the nation is closing achievement gaps. I wanted to connect a few points through this blog.


This week, we have sent out maps to all school districts and major stakeholders showing the proficiency rates of key groups of students. Our expectation in Kentucky is that school districts and schools will have annual goals to raise proficiency rates and that over a five year period, we will cut in half the gap between current performance and the aspirational goal of 100 percent proficient. As with NCLB, we continue to have the aspirational goal of 100 percent proficient, however, we are being much more focused on how to make steady progress and we have created rigorous but achievable annual targets for improvement. Interested readers can find these annual targets for every district and school by going to the new school report card, choosing a school or district and then clicking on the “delivery” tab on the profile page.


The most critical element of closing achievement gaps are the strategies used by schools and districts. The Commissioner's Raising Achievement/Closing Gaps Council has provided a comprehensive report and recommendations. The Kentucky Department of Education is providing strong support for schools and districts that have significant achievement gaps through our focus and priority schools implementation. Also, we are tracking the progress of each school and district and their plans for closing gaps through a comprehensive planning software program called ASSIST.


As I prepare for my testimony to the Congressional committee, I will emphasize that in Kentucky we have not backed up on our push to close achievement gaps. Closing achievement gaps remains the moral, economic and civil rights issue of our times and every educator in Kentucky is committed to helping all children reach college and career readiness.

Key Education Issues for 2013

Over the holiday season I was catching up on my professional reading. Also, I was tracking education writers and their predictions for 2013. I thought it would be good to summarize what I think will be key issues for Kentucky education at the state and national level.

Funding – Funding for education will continue to be on the front burner. At the state level, we see several key issues that will impact funding. The state pension system reform will require significant resources that will eventually have a negative impact on state education funds.

At the national level, the fiscal cliff deal only delayed sequestration decisions for two months. In addition, there will be cuts to federal education funds as Congress has to cut $24 billion due to the two month delay in sequestration.

At the state level, we will see significant discussion over the report by the Blue Ribbon Commission on Tax Reform. My guess is that this issue will be dealt with in a special session. Overall, my prediction on education funding is that we will see continuing reductions in state and federal funds due to the many pressing issues and lack of willingness to increase revenues.

Programs – Early childhood will be one of the top priorities at state and federal levels. Investments in early childhood provide the best return on investment for education dollars. We will also see a state push to raise the dropout age from 16 to 18. A number of other states will also have legislation proposed. This will be a year where Title II issues such as teacher preparation and teacher evaluation gain a lot of momentum and the Secretary of Education will release new guidelines for Title II funding that will support this reform agenda. I have absolutely NO hope to see reauthorization of No Child Left Behind in 2013, however, the state waiver process will inform the debate on reauthorization and lay the groundwork for reauthorization in 2014.

School safety – Everyone agrees that we need to focus on school safety, however, there will not be agreement on specifics. Armed guards have been proposed but funding limitations will hinder that proposal. More focus on gun control laws will be debated and we will see legislation proposed to allow teachers to have concealed permits to carry arms on campus. We will see a lot of debate about reforming mental health. We will also see significant discussions about a culture of violence promoted by media and video games. In the end, I am not certain if much will be accomplished due to the polarization of this issue.

All in all, 2013 does look like a very busy year and a year that I believe will see some significant reform on several fronts. As always, Kentucky educators will be leading on key issues and heavily involved in others.

Social Media and Use by Commissioner of Education

In the past, I have received some criticism for using Twitter and Facebook during the work day. While some folks use Twitter and Facebook for personal reasons, my primary use of both is business. I like to visit schools and districts and take photos of exciting things happening and then tweet the photos. I also enjoy sharing articles that I get from Twitter links that highlight interesting issues in education. Facebook serves pretty much the same purpose, so I have been utilizing Twitter much more than Facebook in recent months.

For example, I recently connected with a major study that was interesting and has implications for Kentucky education. A research study was highlighted this week from the Consortium for Policy Research in Education. This report identified seven major trends and changes shaping the teaching profession in the United States. You can see the study at http://cpre.org/seven-trends-transformation-teaching-force-0.

The seven trends are:

1.      The profession is becoming larger – teachers are the largest occupational group in the nation and have increased by 48 percent during the 1987-2008 period, while student enrollment increased 19 percent.

2.      The profession is becoming grayer.

3.      The profession is becoming greener; the distribution of teachers is becoming bimodal – the numbers with 25-plus years of experience are increasing, and those with less than five years are increasing, while those in between are decreasing

4.      The teaching profession has become increasingly more female.

5.      There is a gap between the percentage of minority students and minority teachers, and the rates at which minority teachers leave schools are considerably higher than that of white teachers.

6.      Students who become teachers have lower SAT scores than those who do not go into teaching.

7.      The profession is becoming less stable with increasing turnover rates.

This study has implications for recruitment, training, hiring, professional learning, retention and retirement issues connected to our Kentucky teaching force. Superintendents and deans of education would be well served by connecting to this research.

All in all, I think Twitter and other social media software have more advantages to disadvantages, and as one user, I gain a great deal of information in a fast and useable method through the use of social media. We at the Kentucky Department of Education believe that these tools are an excellent way to not only get information, but also to communicate information about Kentucky education. Visit me on Twitter @kycommissioner and check out the Department of Education’s Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/#!/kydeptofed.

The Need for College Credit for High School Students

In past blogs, I have written about the work of the Governor’s Transforming Education in Kentucky (TEK) Task Force. In reviewing our progress toward implementing the recommendations from that task force, I found that the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) and partners have accomplished almost every one of the recommendations.

The most recent accomplishment was the implementation of the Executive Order that merged career and technical education within KDE. One of the big recommendations left to work on is ensuring that every student has an opportunity to earn college credit while in high school.

Recently, KDE did a survey of school districts to ask about dual credit issues. Here are some of the results.

·         Over 32 percent of school districts do not offer dual credit for career and technical courses.

·         Over 97 percent of school districts do offer dual credit for college general education courses.

·         Over 60 percent of the districts require parents/students to pay for tuition costs.

·         Over 60 percent of districts require parents/students to pay for textbooks.

·         Only 30 percent of districts utilize virtual learning for dual credit.

As I visit school districts across Kentucky, I find many variations in the cost of dual credit. In some locations, the postsecondary institution has funding to offer dual credit at no cost to students. In other locations, students pay the full tuition costs that a college student would pay.

The results of our survey and my personal visits reveal a number of concerns about equity of opportunity across Kentucky for students to have equal access to dual credit courses. Why is dual credit a good idea?

A recent study from Jobs for the Future – Taking College Courses in High School: A Strategy for College Readiness – studied the impact of dual credit courses in Texas. Texas has had a strategy around college readiness and dual credit for a number of years. Here are some of the findings

·         Students who take dual credit courses were 2.2 times more likely to enroll in higher education.

·         Students who took dual credit courses were two times more likely to return for a second year of college.

·         Students who took dual credit courses were 1.7 times more likely to complete a college degree.

While Kentucky is making terrific progress in the number of students graduating from high school who are college/career-ready (from 34 percent in 2010 to 47 percent in 2012), and Kentucky colleges seeing significant increases in the number of students who obtain two- and four-year degrees, we have much work to do.

There is a strong correlation between economic levels of a state and individuals with the education level of the workforce and individuals. It appears that the Governor’s TEK Task Force was right on target with recommending that EVERY student have access to college-level credit courses while in high school. It is time to make certain that we ensure access is equal in cost, number of courses and quality.