Denial persists at Jefferson County School Board

Fallout from the recent audits of six persistently low-performing schools in Jefferson County continues

Yesterday, the Jefferson County Public Schools District staff presented proposals to the local school board on how to deal with the extensive list of findings from the state audits of the district’s six Persistently Low-Performing Schools.

It looks like the fallout from those audits could lead to tough actions ranging from replacement of principals and teachers at some schools to the complete shutdown of the Frost Middle School.

But, WAVE-3 reports that some of people at yesterday’s local school board meeting remain in denial that anything is wrong.

Some examples from the WAVE-3 post:

"'We don't feel like we have any persistently low performing schools in this district,' said Joseph Burks, JCPS Assistant Superintendent for district-wide high school instructional services."

"I personally wake up every day teach the kids and make sure they know how to read and write and progress to the next level," said Dalton Holt, a Frost Middle 6th and 7th grade Language Arts teacher.

But, WAVE-3 points out that state auditors see it very differently, saying students at the identified schools are not meeting state standards.

What is really sad in all of this is that past school audits in Kentucky have a history of giving schools every benefit of the doubt, perhaps leaning back too far to avoid conflicts. If anything, the current crop of audits are unlikely to overstate the seriousness of problems.

But, denial has become an art form in this country, and it thrives in the Louisville school system. We highlighted one example of this before, when we pointed out that the district jimmied scores from the CATS test to create a false sense of progress in Louisville’s Every1Reads program. Now, the same lack of willingness to accept the obvious in Jefferson County helps explain why serious problems in many of the district’s schools have gone unsolved for so long.