REL Appalachia webinar shows Louisville educators are wrong

Changing principals and teachers is part of successful school turnarounds

I tuned in to a very interesting REL Appalachia webinar not long ago about “KY Turning Around Low-Performing Schools.”

The featured presenter, Ms. Kathy Fields, who is the Lead Instructional Administrator in the Jessamine County Public School District in Kentucky, discussed her successful program to turn around the West Jessamine Middle School. She did such a great job that I called her after the program to learn more.

West Jessamine steadily lost ground under NCLB and was listed as a Tier 4 school (Old nomenclature – five years of failing) when Ms. Fields moved in to turn things around.

As you can see in her Power Point presentation, her turnaround program was very extensive. It included lots of teacher help that almost amounted to fully reeducating the teachers in the school about how to teach effectively.

Fields’ program included something more, something that educators in Louisville recently proved they don’t understand, or simply don’t want to admit.

The West Jessamine Middle School turnaround did include the removal of the principal. It also removed 11 (about 20 percent) of the teachers in the school who – after being given an opportunity and assistance to improve – simply would not, or could not, adjust to what really works for children.

The removed teachers displayed both attitudes and ineptitude.

One obstructionist teacher defiantly declared he wasn’t going to take direction from a woman!

Another teacher initially refused to create lesson plans, and never did learn how to create them acceptably.

Tenured teachers were moved elsewhere in the system, where at least one did quite well once placed in a lower grade level school that was a better skills match. Non-tenured teachers were let go.



The point for Louisville is that this successful (not just theoretical) school turnaround disclosed that some teachers and school leaders were a part of the problem. They had to be removed if the school was going to be improved for kids.

There is another issue.

A whole lot of Kentucky educators need to log on and listen at a link available here to this success story. Why do I say this? Only 58 people nationwide logged into the webinar. With 174 school districts in this state, that tells me a whole lot of Kentucky educators who need to hear this message so far have not.

I hope the Kentucky Department of Education will help with that. I don’t know if they provided any advance information about this very well done webinar to our educators, but there is a second opportunity now that the audio and Power Point from the webinar are uploaded at REL Appalachia.

In closing, I wouldn’t be surprised if no-one in Jefferson County was listening. In fact, I just got a comment to a rather old blog from a teacher there who clearly has not. But, folks there really need to do so because right now the actions of Jefferson County educators prove they need to go back to school on how education turnarounds really work. They need to move beyond their romantic notion that all teachers do great work. And, Louisville doesn’t have to look any farther than Jessamine County to find some really great help and a great example of educators who are willing to make hard decisions that help children.

Fortunately, the recent action to refocus on academics in Jefferson County shows the district may finally be starting to get some of this message.