KY Chamber session gets some things right about education

I was on the road when the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce held its annual conference, but a post in the chamber’s blog concerning an education discussion is worth a look.

It was a three-way panel with former US Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, international education consultant Sir Michael Barber, and Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday.

Some points:

Spellings says business people must act as “the point of the spear” in fighting for education reform in order to develop a qualified workforce that meets the demands of a new economy. Both parents and business leaders should demand higher expectations from students and, most importantly, teachers and administrators.

She also said Kentucky had room for improvement in identifying and retaining effective teachers and removing ineffective teachers. She didn’t like the lack of charter schools and noted the disappointing achievement gap between white and minority students.

Barber said, “Any system that wants to make progress has to stop feeling sorry for itself and take responsibility for its own future.” He also pointed out, “Spending money alone won’t fix the system.”

Holliday admitted that a third of our kids are not graduating from high school. He also pointed to another shocking fact: “A meager four counties are graduating the vast majority of our state’s college-ready students.” That means the vast majority of Kentucky’s 174 school systems are not meeting this very important goal.

Clearly, there is much work to be done.

All that educational progress????

Once again, the Prichard Committee is talking about all the educational progress we have made in Kentucky at the same time they admit we have a long way to go.

I most definitely agree with the part about having a long way to go, but I just don’t see that what has happened so far is significant.

Take a look at this graph, which shows the latest available proficiency rate scores (percentage scoring at or above Proficient) from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The full bars show the most recently reported proficiency rates by subject and grade. Inside of each bar I show the earliest available proficiency rate data for that same subject and grade (click on the graph to enlarge it, if necessary).


Overall, notice that after 19 years of KERA (17 for writing, which was last given in 2007) we generally only find about one in three students are proficient in Kentucky in the listed subjects. For eighth grade math and writing, the proficiency rate is little more than just one in four.

Now, consider where we started on grade 4 reading and math and grade 8 math in the early days of KERA (other subjects didn’t start to test until 1996 or later).

In grade 4 reading, between 1992 and 2009, a 17-year period, our proficiency rate only increased by 13 percentage points. That works out to an average improvement rate of only 0.765 point per year. At that rate, it will take us more than 70 years to reach a proficiency rate of 90 percent! Clearly, we’ve barely started on the journey towards high academic performance, and we are a long way from attaining that goal in fourth grade reading.

I have run more estimates to reach 90 percent proficiency for other subjects in the graph, and you can click the “Read more” link to see that.

Bottom line, anyone who thinks the proficiency rates in the graph above signal significant progress doesn’t have very high standards. And, it is for certain that if we don’t do something dramatic (like establishing charter schools) to stimulate the sluggardly pace of improvement in our schools, the competition is going to bury our kids.

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