Kentucky needs to rework school based decision making - 1

As 2022 begins, it’s now obvious the pandemic opened Kentucky’s parents’ eyes like never before to shortcomings in the state’s public education system.

Certainly, instruction was even less effective than normal during the pandemic. That’s especially problematic considering the latest pre-pandemic reading assessment by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) of Kentucky’s fourth grade students showed scarcely more than one in three could read proficiently and only a dismal 14% of the state’s Black students could pass similar muster.

Things looked even worse in math, where the 2019 NAEP Grade 8 Math Assessment reported Kentucky overall only produced a dismal 29% proficiency rate with the Black rate even lower at just 11%.

Now, thanks to the pandemic, proficiency rates the NAEP would report are almost certainly lower. Further dropping effectiveness of already inadequate instruction is problem enough.

But, perhaps even more importantly, remote learning caused by the pandemic allowed parents to finally see much more of what their children actually were being taught by the public school system. To put it mildly, many parents were not pleased.

Strong reaction to such things as what is now dubbed “CRT” broke out in a number of areas across the state.

Along the way, more than a few parents were shocked to learn their locally elected school board members were actually powerless to do anything about the CRT situation because Kentucky’s now three-decades old law about School Based Decision Making (SBDM) took away the locally elected boards’ authority over curriculum. As we wrote in 2018 in our report about Kentucky’s School Based

Decision Making Policy, A Closer Look, that authority over curriculum now rests lock, stock and barrel with teacher-dominated school councils found in virtually all regular public schools in the state. All of this leaves parents and ordinary citizens who know the education situation needs improvement in a real pickle. Teacher-dominated school councils don’t have to listen to parents or citizens because the SBDM law shields them from any consequences for ignoring non-school folks. If a teacher-controlled council wants to continue teaching in ways the local community doesn’t like, that council can elect to go right on doing that.

So, a school council can go right on teaching in ways that produce very low reading and math proficiencies. Citizens have essentially no way to hold the school staff accountable even if the vast majority of students are not getting an adequate education.

With one exception — the Kentucky Legislature has the power to change the SBDM law. One way the legislature can improve the law is by reassigning authority over local schools back where it really belongs, with the locally elected school board. If parents, citizens – even teachers, for that matter – don’t approve of what their local board is doing, they can vote the board members out of office.

Right now, voting for different board members really doesn’t change anything regarding instruction due to interference from the current SBDM law, but it doesn’t, and shouldn’t, have to be this way. One thing is certain, after three decades of SBDM controlled education in Kentucky, massive numbers of students are not getting the education they need. It’s time for more accountability and a change.

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