Why Have “Highly Skilled Educators” if We Don’t Use Them?

A rare event is taking place in Kentucky. Another extraordinarily poor performing school’s Site Base Decision Making Council (SBDM) is going to lose its governing authority.

This time, it’s the Two Rivers Middle School in Covington that is finally up for some long overdue changes.

But, how effective will the changes be?

In February 2007 the Holmes Junior Senior High School, also in Covington, lost its SBDM authority. However, the Kentucky Board of Education hardly made much of a governance change, merely shifting control from the SBDM to the local school superintendent.

Now, it looks like the same approach is being recommended for Two Rivers.

Back in 2007, I asked why the job wasn’t’ given to people who are supposed to be specially trained for this – the “Highly Skilled Educators.”

I’m asking that question again.

And, this time, I’m asking another question: why doesn’t the staff note on Two Rivers Middle School even mention the fact that the superintendent route was already tried in Holmes High?

Even the most rudimentary common sense management approach would dictate that the performance of the high school under the superintendent should be examined before blindly taking the same approach for the middle school.

By the way, I took a quick look at Holmes High’s 2008 Kentucky Performance Report (KPR) to see how things went after the superintendent took over in February 2007.

Here are some tidbits from the high school data on page 3 of the KPR:

Scores for the key subjects of math, science and social studies fell from 2007 to 2008. Attendance dropped, and so did the inflated graduation rates. The only scores that rose notably were in writing, and we now know that even the legislature has questions about inflation in scores for that subject after the unanimous passage of Senate Bill 1.

In the more credible test information area, the Holmes High PLAN scores also dropped.

So, how’s that again about transferring control to the superintendent instead of someone who is supposed to be trained for this sort of situation?