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.

Quote of the Day: Outside educator sees big problems in Louisville’s schools

“Reviewing your student achievement gap, I’m very concerned.”

Christine Johns-Haines, superintendent of Utica Community Schools in Michigan and candidate for superintendent in Jefferson County Public Schools in Kentucky

BIPPS in Louisville Business First: The experience gap in Jefferson County schools

There are many gaps contributing to the poor performance of the Jefferson County Public Schools, including the well-publicized academic achievement gap between whites and minorities and the common-sense gaps which are unmistakable in the district's busing and student-assignment policies.

However, the most serious gap might be "the experience gap."
I write about it in today's Louisville Business First.

Dick Innes offers additional analysis of the JCPS teacher-experience gap in this recent blog entry.

Kentucky’s 11th Grade ACT testing report contains surprises

Hints at unequal educational opportunities and minority out-migration from Kentucky

The new 2010 report on the testing of all Kentucky 11th grade students with the ACT college entrance test has been released. I’ve already posted two blogs on overall score results for all students.

Now, I’m going to shift focus to how the minorities performed. There is both good and bad news here along with some real surprises and reasons for concern.

Among those surprises and concerns –

• The number of Hispanics in 11th grade dropped in the past two years, going against all sorts of reports we have received about Hispanic migration rising in Kentucky.
• Kentucky’s 11th grade got notably “whiter” in the past two years as minority counts in the ACT testing for American Indian/Alaskan Natives, Hispanics, and Asian-American/Pacific Islanders all dropped.
• Kentucky’s black students are enrolling in courses needed for college preparation in much lower percentages than other racial groups.


To learn much more, and to see the data, click the “Read more” link below.

Read more »

Kentucky’s 11th Grade ACT test scores are up slightly

A new report from the Kentucky Department of Education lists results for this year’s full testing of all 11th grade students on the ACT college entrance test. I blogged yesterday on how our students performed against the ACT Benchmark Scores that indicate good college preparation. That discussion showed we have a very, very long way to go.

Today, let’s look at the ACT Composite Score results.

In a bit of good news, while scores remain well below what is desirable, they are inching up a bit for most of the student groups reported.


The top part of this table, which comes from the Kentucky Department of Education’s news release 10-043 about the scores, shows the only exception of note to the general progress in scores is for Hispanics, who made no improvement from 2009 to 2010.

Things are a less satisfactory in the area of the achievement gaps, shown below the blue line in the table. I computed these from the KDE score data shown above the blue line in the table.

Kentucky’s largest minority group, the African-Americans, lost a little ground to the whites in the scoring gap for 2010 versus 2009. So did the Hispanics. However, the gaps in 2010 for both these racial groups are not as large as they were in 2008. Still, the gaps shown here are substantial, indicating that we have a lot of work to do to provide good educations to our minority students.

On another happy note, whites closed their gap a little with Kentucky’s always academically superior Asian American/Pacific Islander group.

I will probably have more comments once I get a chance to review the full set of data from the department of education, which you can also access here.

By the way, full ACT testing of all 11th grade students started in 2008 as a result of Senate Bill 130 from the 2006 regular legislative session. The Bluegrass Institute supported the policy of class-wide testing of 11th grade students with the ACT and of eighth and 10th grade students with coordinated tests from ACT for several reasons.

• We wanted more reliable information about how our schools were doing in getting students ready for follow-on higher education studies,
• We hoped that adding these tests to our accountability system would encourage schools to become more focused on college preparation,
• We also hoped that some bright students who were not considering college would be encouraged to do so, and finally,
• We hoped that students who needed more work and assistance would learn about their deficiencies in time to improve.

The slow inching up of scores indicates that the desired effects are starting to appear even though the rate of progress is far slower than desired.

New Department of Education Strategic Plan pays attention to achievement gaps

New accountability program will include assessment of gap performance

The Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) made a lot of comments about the state’s endemic achievement gaps during the Kentucky Board of Education’s August meeting and retreat.

This discussion started with Associate Commissioner Ken Draut’s presentation during the retreat part of the meeting. Ken provided a nice review of the many different performance gaps for student groups in Kentucky using a detailed, 25-page handout titled “Academic Performance Data.” This handout is available in two parts, Part 1, with Pages 1 to 19, and Part 2, with Pages 20 to 25.

Ken’s handouts have lots of data on the gaps from such indicators as the Kentucky Core Content Tests, graduation rates (using the credible Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate formula instead of our old, inflated calculation), the ACT college entrance test and the ACT’s EXPLORE and PLAN tests and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

I capture just a small amount of Ken’s presentation in these two graphs, which show the gaps on the Kentucky Core Content Test (KCCT) in reading and mathematics.


Several things stand out in the reading graph. First, Asian students do notably better than whites at all school levels, but the trend gets more favorable to Asians in the upper grades. What do we need to harness from our Asian students and transplant to our whites?

Note, as well, that in Kentucky Hispanic-white gaps are notably lower than African-American to white gaps. However, the Limited English Proficiency (LEP) student’s gaps are much worse than the African-American to white gaps. Only students with learning disabilities have larger gaps.

Also notice that the gaps by racial group vary dramatically.

Here is the graph for mathematics.


The trends are generally similar, with one added note. The KCCT’s Female Vs. Male gaps in Kentucky favor females, which is definitely not what we find in other testing such as the NAEP, where males in Kentucky do better than the females. The differences are small for the sexes, but there may be an indication here of potential bias in the KCCT results by sex.

In any event, it is clear from the graphs above and the very extensive data presented in Academic Performance Data that Kentucky needs to pay attention to its persistent education gaps. Thus, it is good to see that gaps are a specific highlight area in the state’s strategic plan, which I mentioned in an earlier blog. It is also good to hear that the department intends to include a separate metric for gaps in the state’s new public school accountability program.