Doing as little as possible to fix Jefferson County schools

And, trying to get out of doing even that

Over the past year, 12 of Kentucky’s 20 Persistently Low-Achieving Schools have come from one school district, Jefferson County. But, the district is showing little imagination as it selects options to try to turn around chronic low performance in those schools.

Following earlier audit reports, the Jefferson County Board of Education selected one common turn-around option for all of its first nine low-performing schools, the “Restaffing Option.”

Now, the board of education has voted to continue on that same, unimaginative trail. The Jefferson County board just chose the “Restaffing Option” to turn-around endemic low performance in its last three schools to receive audits: Iroquois, Southern and Waggener high schools.

Thus, all 12 of Jefferson County’s schools will use the “Restaffing Option” to try and rescue all of the district’s low-performers from a chronic history of problems. Exploring the other three options to see if those work better is of no interest to this unimaginative crowd. It’s all about minimum pain for adults in the system.

And, the pain will be even less than the US Government envisioned when it defined the “Restaffing Option.” Because many of the teachers in the last three low-performing schools have only been in those schools a short time (a chronic problem with low-performing schools is excessive staff turnover), those low-time staffers will count against the number that need to be replaced.

The end result is that far fewer than 50 percent of the teachers are going to move from those schools. Again, we are talking minimum pain for adults, but dubious educational improvement for kids.



And, if that isn’t enough, today the Jefferson County schools and their local teachers union failed in an attempt to water down the turn-around process even farther.

This morning the Kentucky House’s Education Committee finally voted on House Bill 476. This bill would have changed and notably weakened the way the Persistently Low-Achieving Schools program is operated. The bill added a fifth turn-around selection that would have been the clear ‘weak sister’ option if it were ever approved by the federal government. The bill also would have reduced the authority of the commissioner of education to make decisions about the turn-around process. Most importantly, the bill would have severely reduced the scope of the program, including only 10 schools in it instead of the 30 or so currently envisioned once the process has run a full, three-year cycle (after which, hopefully, the first identified schools will have improved to the point where they no longer will need to be included).

Fortunately, HB-476 was too much even for the highly union-oriented House Education Committee. The bill failed passage in the committee.

By the way, it should be pointed out that not every Jefferson County Board of Education member went along with doing the “same old, same old.” Debbie Westlund and Carol Haddad wanted to try something different, the “Transformation” option.

Of course, the Transformation Option ties teacher evaluations and pay to academic progress. The union hates those ideas. The union much prefers just to have bad teachers shuffled around to other schools, where they can continue to under-perform while continuing to pay union dues. Sadly, unlike the House Education Committee, the union still holds plenty of sway with the board in Jefferson County.

Even worse, while the evidence is still very incomplete, it is beginning to indicate that the Transformation Option may work a lot better than the Staff Replacement Option. Stay tuned for more on that tomorrow.