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– Are they worth the cost?

Around 74,000 teachers now have been certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), and 32,000 teachers have been certified for more than half a decade.

The organization’s directory of teachers indicates that as of March 30, 2009 there are 1,605 active certified teachers in Kentucky, although state data implies somewhat fewer are actually working in positions where they qualify for annual incentive stipends.

Certainly, with so many teachers now certified, there should be some pretty decent data on how NBPTS teachers really perform.

And, given the initial costs of certification (at least $2,565) and the continuing extra $2,000 stipend that each certified teacher gets every year in Kentucky, which cost the state $2,464,000 in the 2007-08 school year, that evidence should conclusively show that nationally certified teachers make a big difference in the classroom.

Sadly, that isn’t the case. In fact, in a recent interview (free subscription may be required to fully access article) in the Phi Delta Kappan education journal, Suzanne M. Wilson was asked about the effects of being certified. She replied, “The effects and consequences of the NBPTS for teachers’ individual and collective work remains unclear.” Ms. Wilson went on to point out that there hasn’t been much exploration of ways to structure the careers of teachers with certification.

What makes Ms. Wilson’s rather unimpressive assessment of the situation more telling is the fact that she helped to write the NBPTS policy document that provided the framework for the organization’s standards. If anything, Ms. Wilson would be expected to paint the rosiest picture possible.

With an up front cost to date of over $4 million to nationally certify Kentucky’s 1,605 NBPTS teachers and with continuing annual costs of almost $2.5 million, it seems time to ask if the taxpayer might deserve a better bang for his bucks.

The legislative session has ended, and Senate Bill 1 (SB-1), which drops the CATS assessments, is now law.

Next, activity to implement the nuts and bolts of the bill shifts to the Kentucky Board of Education (KBE) and the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE).

The first chance these two groups will have to work SB-1 will come on April 1 and 2 at the next meeting of the Kentucky Board of Education.

However, if the agenda for the meeting is any indication, there doesn’t seem to be much planned to begin extensive work required by SB-1.

That’s not a good idea, because SB-1 has some fast action requirements that need to be worked right away.

For example, the new legislation requires the KDE to begin a comprehensive process of reviewing academic standards in all the CATS areas within 30 days of the bill’s enactment. That process has to be coordinated with the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education. Certainly, the KBE will want to know what is going on in this effort, as the standards are the very heart of any good accountability system.

In addition, the KBE is required to revise the administration code for the assessments to outlaw inappropriate test preparation activities. This revision must include disciplinary actions to be taken for infractions, which are always difficult to develop. SB-1 says this regulatory update must happen within 60 days of the effective date of the bill, which I assume occurred when Gov. Beshear signed it last week.

Anyway, the only item in the KBE agenda that seems related to SB-1 is a generic reference to a review of “2009 Elementary and secondary legislation (attachment under separate cover).” This single event comes on day two of the board meeting, so if board members want to consider anything for later discussion, those discussions would have to come at a later board meeting.

I would suggest that the initial discussion of SB-1 needs to be moved forward to day one of the board’s meeting so an initial follow-up can occur on day two. Setting up anything in this state’s regulatory system in 60 days is difficult, at best, so the test practice rule revision work needs to start ASAP. Furthermore, the board might want to pass on some guidance to the KDE as it starts the standards review process. Having an extra day to work up that guidance would probably be a smart move, as well.

It’s hard to argue with the idea that the worst thing the Kentucky General Assembly did in the 2009 regular session was tucked into page two of a House Committee Substitute of HB 143. It allowed:

“… the Governor to direct a one-time transfer of up to $50,000,000 from the Public Employee Health Insurance Trust Fund’s surplus to the General Fund.”

The Health Fund raid comes in addition to the public employee benefits mess whose underfunding was nearly $30 billion last June before the bottom fell out of the stock market.

Senate President David Williams seemed to recognize as recently as last summer that continuing to treat the benefits plans like a bottomless piggy bank was not a good idea. Former Speaker of the House Jody Richards’ rambling justification for inaction at the time will only look worse as time goes on.

Gov. Beshear should do the right thing and repudiate the Health Fund raid.

I blogged on an Ohio anti-government transparency trick yesterday.

Already, the fruits of these shenanigans are coming to light.

Today the Cincinnati Enquirer reports Ohio’s special education community is up in arms about the education budget that resulted from conducting the work in a private company immune from Ohio’s open records laws.

Some of the charges from the special-ed folks include using one-time federal stimulus money to fund programs that need long-term, multi-year commitments and possible violation of federal laws.

The Ohio governor’s office reportedly is already backtracking, which just means more time will now be wasted because of this clear violation of the concept of government transparency.

Kentucky legislators – please pay attention. We don’t want this sort of deep secret budget stuff going on down here. With rumors of a special session already flying everywhere, you may face Ohio-like temptations sooner than you think.

Gov. Steve Beshear’s video message released Friday discussed the just-completed legislative session.

“When we entered the 2009 General Assembly session, the legislature and I understood that our state’s future was truly on the line. All of us knew we were working toward something much larger than ourselves, so we ignored labels like Democrat and Republican, House and Senate, Legislative and Executive.”

They also set aside labels like fiscal restraint, discipline, honesty, and transparency.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0p7jZxn6Qc]

A new report from the National Center for Education Statistics on “Comparative Indicators of Education in the United States and Other G-8 Countries: 2009” has just been released. We still need to worry about what our kids are not learning.

Figure 12a in the report, shown here, indicates that for children who come from wealthy households, shown by the light gray bars, the US Science score of 541 only exceeded children of wealthy parents in the Russian Federation and Italy.

For students whose parents come from the least wealthy families, in each country, shown by the blue bars, our kids only beat out Italy.

In addition, I looked at the poor-to-wealthy score gap for each country. Our gap of 96 points (541 minus 445) was only exceeded by France. That raises equity issues, as well.