Senate Bill 1 from the 2009 Regular Legislative Session directed a number of very important and dramatic changes to Kentucky’s public education system. The bill cancelled our dubious CATS assessments and directed the Kentucky Department of Education and its governing board to first come up with better education standards and then to use those better standards to craft new state assessments. The bill told educators to create what we really wanted: a system that would educate our kids for college and careers.

Senate Bill 1 broke new ground in another important area – the legislation firmly mandated that public school educators and the state’s college community would work together to craft the new standards and the assessment program. The level of cooperation between the K to 12 group and college staff required by the bill was unprecedented.

To insure that the postsecondary community got the message and played their role well, Senate Bill 1 also required the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE) – the state’s college governance agency – to insure that word about the changes got out to college faculty.

Thus came to be the CPE’s “Senate Bill 1 Information Workshops.” These are being held for college faculty around the state, and I had the great pleasure to attend the February 24, 2011 session in Covington, Kentucky.

The workshop included a series of highly informative sessions about the law itself, why it is needed (because college remediation rates remain far too high) and the current status of the education standards development process.

There were informative breakout sessions on the new Common Core State Standards for math and English language arts that Kentucky adopted from the national common core effort, and a brief discussion about where we are in the process of developing the new assessments.

Overall, it was a very informative day – one I think would benefit college educators from any discipline.

And, that leads to the one disappointment of the day.

Outside of a handful of college instructors from other disciplines, the meeting was largely attended by faculty from education schools, only.

The CPE needs to work harder to get the message out that these workshops are for all faculty members and that it would be wise for at least one representative from each of the major disciplines on each campus to attend one of these sessions.

You see, these are indeed two-way workshops. The people running them are looking for feedback to help make Kentucky’s latest attempt at major public school improvement work far more effectively. That is a lot more likely to happen if non-ed school staff show up and add their good insight and ideas about what we can do to provide them with better prepared students to enter their college classrooms.

Future workshop dates and locations are listed below:

March 4, 2011—Georgetown
March 25, 2011—Hopkinsville
April 8, 2011­­–Webinar
April 21, 2011—Bowling Green
August 21, 2011—Webinar

For more information or to register, go to http://kycorestandards.org.

Actually, I think that K to 12 personnel would also benefit and should consider attending these meetings, or logging in to one of the webinars, as well.

This morning NPR interviewed economist Dean Baker.  He claimed that there is too much focus on the budget deficit in recent months and that if anything the federal government needs to be spending MORE money.  He believes that job creation should be focus of discussion and even went as far as to say that there is no difference between the private sector spending money to create jobs and the government spending money to create jobs.

I beg to differ.  The difference is that a business can be forced to close it’s doors.  The government will just continue to borrow money and raise taxes. 

There is a big difference, Mr. Baker.

The federal health care mandate will hit Kentucky hard. Its required increases in eligibility will swell Kentucky’s Medicaid rolls and drive up costs in a state ill-equipped to handle such bloated growth. Why aren’t Kentucky policymakers following the example of other states’ leaders who are standing up to Washington to get better deals for their constituents?

Click here to read the latest Bluegrass Bullet.

I posted the new test results from the eighth grade EXPLORE and tenth grade PLAN testing in Kentucky several days ago.

These are found in a Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) news release titled, “EXPLORE AND PLAN RESULTS SHOW IMPROVEMENT,” which released on February 24, 2011.

At the time, I was most interested in the scores.

I missed the fact that the title of the news release and the first paragraph’s comment that “school scores moved up slightly in nearly all subject areas tested” were inaccurate spins of the rather mixed trends from 2009 to 2010.

FACT: On EXPLORE, between 2009 and 2010 scores only moved up in the individual academic subjects of math and science. The EXPLORE scores stayed flat in reading and went down in English.

FACT: On PLAN, scores also declined in English between 2009 and 2010. Science stayed flat. PLAN scores only increased in math and reading.

Overall, the PLAN Composite also stayed flat, which certainly conflicts with the KDE’s headline, as well.

I suspect that if questioned, the KDE would claim that they were talking about the whole period trends from 2006 to 2010, but I think most people reading the headline and the first sentence comment would think the comments refer to changes from last year.

Besides, if we are talking about the whole period from 2006 to 2010, the scores did improve somewhat in all areas, not just in “nearly all subject areas tested.”

KDE can’t have this both ways, and a correction would be appropriate, especially as the rather stagnant PLAN data indicates our schools are not getting the message – we want our kids better prepared for college and careers, not whatever nebulous things the soon to be defunct Kentucky Core Content Test looks for.

Kentucky’s first round of 10 Persistently Low-Achieving Schools was identified in early spring of 2010, nearly one year ago. Eight of the 10 schools are high schools, so I thought it would be interesting to see how these schools did on the fall 2010 PLAN test administration.

Of course, the innovations being introduced in these schools haven’t had nearly enough time to show much impact, but it is still interesting to take a baseline look.

Here are the PLAN score trends from 2009-10 to 2010-11 for each of the first group of Persistently Low-Achieving High Schools. The far right column summarizes the one year trend in the Composite Score for each school (click on table to enlarge).

Overall, two schools actually had slight Composite Score declines while two stayed static, and four showed a score increase. Two of the four schools with an increase in score had a rather notable increase, 0.8 points or more.

Again, I would not make much of these trends, as the schools had not had much time to make changes when the PLAN was given, but there are causes for both optimism and caution here.

However, all of these schools still score below, sometimes very far below, the Kentucky-wide PLAN Composite average, which was 16.7 in 2010-11. And, the Kentucky average lags a national norm average set back in 2005 by 0.8 point, as well.

There is one other item of note. Schools are supposed to test every 10th grader, so the number of students taking the PLAN should closely agree with the enrollment in that grade. What is interesting is that in almost every school in the listing, the number of 10th graders tested dropped between 2009-10 and 2010-11. The number of students tested rose only in two of the schools.

Statewide, across all grades, enrollment only dropped very slightly from 652,071 students in 2009-10 to 651,025 students in 2010-11, a drop of about 0.16 percent. All of the schools with drops shown above had much larger percentage changes in the same time interval.

New PLAN score release adds more evidence of misconduct

Who will be held accountable: Anyone?

It is absolutely vital that the integrity of testing in Kentucky is carefully maintained if this state is to reestablish a viable assessment system.

Sadly, events since last summer regarding school staffers cheating on the ACT in Perry County, which we discussed before here, here, here, and here provide a still unfinished story about whether state officials have the stomach to defend Kentucky’s testing programs from cheating.

The Hazard-Herald reports local commotion over the scandal boiled up again a few days ago in a Perry County Board of Education meeting.

And, while we will have to wait until August for new ACT scores, the release several days ago of the latest PLAN scores for the current school term adds to concerns that serious test tampering occurred last year on ACT, Incorporated tests given in Perry County’s two high schools, and the tampering wasn’t limited to the ACT. PLAN is another state-required test from the ACT, Incorporated given to all 10th grade students that is very similar to the ACT.

The table below (click on it to enlarge), extracted from an Excel spreadsheet with the new test results for all schools in the state, shows both of Perry County’s high schools experienced very large score increases on the PLAN test between 2008-09 and 2009-10, the year when the cheating allegedly occurred.

Both Perry County schools then experienced tremendous score drops after close scrutiny forced the staff to play honest during the current school year’s test cycle.

These one-year PLAN score drops between 2009-10 and 2010-11 are absolutely enormous. They are more than twice as large as any other drop in any other high school in the state.

Thus, the evidence mounts, including findings from the ACT investigation itself, that answer sheets were altered. And, ACT says the students didn’t do it. That means the only other individuals who had access to the controlled answer sheets did.

Should the school staff responsible for this get off scot free?

So far, the only individuals who have suffered because of the improper changing of answer sheet entries are the students, who had to retake the ACT.

But, the Kentucky Educational Professional Standards Board did receive a referral from the Kentucky Department of Education and is conducting an investigation.

Furthermore; since the ACT drives money from KEES scholarships, which impacts both taxpayers and students; and influences college admissions, which obviously impacts students; perhaps other state agencies will decide to take a look, as well.

So, stay tuned.

One critical point in all of this is that we don’t want to send a message to educators around Kentucky that if you get caught altering test sheets, others in the system will cover for you.

If that bad message gets sent, Kentucky’s new assessment system’s credibility is dead before the first test booklet ever gets printed.

The fall 2010 results from the EXPLORE and PLAN tests were released today, and there is a bit of progress in some areas compared to last year balanced by stagnation or decay in others.

This first table, taken from the Kentucky Department of Education’s news release, shows the eighth grade EXPLORE scores by subject and test year (testing is done in the fall of the listed year). I shaded drops in scores between 2009 and 2010 in this and the next table in pink when scores dropped. Scores that stayed flat are shaded in yellow, and increases are in green.

It is worth noting that since 2006, eighth grade scores are up across the board, which is good news. Also, in most cases, the 2010 scores are higher than the last national norming sample available for this assessment, which is now a rather stale half-decade old.

Here is the data for the PLAN test, which is administered to 10th grade students.

Scores are also up across the board from 2006, but English decayed slightly between 2009 and 2010.

Sadly, our 10th grade students’ scores in 2010 remain behind the national norms, which, again, are rather stale.

You can access detailed reports, including spreadsheets with individual school scores, here.

I’ll have more on these important tests tomorrow.

Kentucky has no check and balance on union influence. Kentucky elected officials ask: “Captain, may I?’ before upsetting powerful union bosses.

Kentucky unions excel at telling legislators and public servants “NO” on needed reforms in trying times. Examples:

• No education funding awarded to Kentucky in the Race to the Top competition because of the fight over charter schools.

• No school choice legislation.
• No eliminating prevailing-wage mandates that neuter competition for state projects by dictating union wages and classifications.
• No right-to-work legislation giving workers a choice on whether to pay union dues or not.
• No needed reforms of underfunded — and unsustainable — public-sector pensions and benefits.

Kentucky is not alone.

It is no secret that unions work hard with members’ dues to elect legislators, school board members and taxpayer-paid managers who support their agenda. They play to the predominant public servants’ “its all about what’s best for me” mentality. Smart! It’s a win-win, totally compatible power play.

Leaders in other states are stepping up to address needed checks and balances on union influence because they can’t push it off on someone else anymore.

Soon, Kentucky leaders will be part of the few that still check their brains at the door and ask the unions what they should do so “everyone gets along.”

When you’re broke, you’re broke. It’s tough to spin that.

Maybe its time to break some glass for Kentucky’s taxpayers and kids.

Read the full “Rewarding Failure” commentary here.

“Rewarding Failure” is a recently published commentary by The Bluegrass Institute based on superintendent evaluations obtained via the Kentucky Open Records Act.

One of the districts profiled is Carter County Public Schools, a district that, at the time of the requested superintendent evaluation in 2009, had:

• failed meet even the watered-down goals of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) for eight consecutive years
• five of 10 schools not meeting the basic NCLB goals
• and only 9.2% of 11th graders meeting the ACT benchmark for math

raved about the performance of their superintendent.  In fact, the evaluator commented that the superintendent was:

“doing a good job like the fact you attend so many school function and visit classrooms….”

It seems like the superintendent of a school district should be more concerned with student achievement.  The leader of the school district should be held to high standards, evaluated based on specific goals outlined by quantifiable metrics, and held accountable when even the most basic standards for student learning can not be met.

You can view the actual performance evaluation for Carter County School along with three other districts here.