School Leader

The New Era of Education has arrived

Earlier this week I had the honor of speaking at the Metcalfe County Schools opening day event.  It was a chance to support my friend, Metcalfe superintendent Dr. Benny Lile, but also to highlight why Metcalfe's new status as a Kentucky District of Innovation is so important.

I gave a version of a talk I've delivered several times, usually to incoming cohorts of WKU's principal certification program.  The theme of the talk is how we are living through the second of two great seismic shifts in the history of American education.  This is an idea I borrowed directly from Vanderbilt University education professor Dr. Joseph Murphy, and first wrote about here. 

You can read the full text of my message at the link below, but in broad overview, Joe argues that the first seismic shift in schooling occurred when America transformed from an agricultural to an industrial-based economy.  A factory model of education emerged, mirroring the kinds of standardization and mass production processes found in the great manufacturing industries that were now the engine of American prosperity.  And that factory model of learning, which was designed to rank and sort students for jobs in the industrial economy, worked well for its purpose.  We didn't need to educate all students because low-skilled jobs were abundant for all.

But the economy has now changed.  America is no longer the sole economic superpower and there is a dearth of opportunity for those with limited knowledge and skills.  And yet the factory model of education continues to dominate, and it's not capable of educating students to the high level of content knowledge, critical thinking, and virtuous citizenship required in today's marketplace.

Furthermore, American consumers now enjoy an unprecedented level of customization, choice, and personalization in their lifestyles and purchasing decisions.  Smartphones, Fitbit technology, and Netflix all exemplify the kind of individualized, real time, on demand technologies in information, fitness, and entertainment that Americans have come to expect and rely upon.  And yet our schools continue to deliver a standardized, one-size-fits-all product that fails to address the unique interests, needs, and readiness levels of individual students.

But a New Era of Education has arrived to address this new economic challenge:

We see the New Education in new tools for diagnosing students’ academic readiness levels and providing enrichments or interventions that respond exactly to that child’s individual needs. We see it in flipped classrooms and Maker Spaces. We see it charter schools. We see it in the movement toward hybrid learning models that blend online learning, field-based learning that takes place out in real-world environments, and traditional learning in brick-and-mortar buildings...

We who make our living in institutions of education have a choice to make. We can choose to resist this new era of learning and be dragged kicking and screaming into the New Education, trying our best to hold on to the old factory model as long as we can. Or we can get out ahead of it, embrace the enormous opportunity we have to improve the lives of our students, and help define what the New Education is going to look like.

But make no mistake: the New Education has arrived and parents and students will demand the same kind of personalization and choice they enjoy in their cell phones and FitBits and Netflix, and if we don’t offer it they will eventually take their business elsewhere.  And they will be able to do so.

The Metcalfe County Schools are not entering the New Era kicking and screaming.  To the contrary, as one of Kentucky's newest Districts of Innovation, Metcalfe is distinguishing itself as a pioneer in personalization of the learning process.  Under their DOI plan, new models of student advisement will be implemented, at-risk students will received heightened levels of individualized support, blending learning will become more commonplace, and there will be an expansion of career planning, standards-based assessment, competency-based instruction, and flexible scheduling. 

These are educational innovations that are now widely recognized as best practices, and yet still rarely implemented.  Metcalfe County has the opportunity to set the pace for Kentucky school districts.

The Districts of Innovation program isn't the answer all our educational problems.  Some have suggested districts of innovation are a good substitute for charter schools.  They are not, because they don't offer additional choices of education provider to families.  And even districts with DOI status are still hamstrung by many onerous regulations in staffing and other areas.

But the DOI program is a good first step toward encouraging educators to embrace the New Era of Education, and I'm so pleased my friends in Metcalfe are going to be leading the way.

Read the full text of my talk here:  Download Metcalfe County Schools Opening Day Comments

Usual disclaimer: All opinions expressed on this blog are my own and do not reflect the views of Western Kentucky University or the Kentucky Board of Education.

Expand educational options for Kentucky families with scholarship tax credits

I've learned a lot in my two decades working in education.  One thing I've learned is that no school, no matter how good, can adequately meet the needs of every single student.  That's why every family deserves the chance to choose from a variety of high-quality schooling options, regardless of their income level or ZIP code. 

There are many policy strategies for expanding educational choice, including charter schools and education savings accounts, both of which I support.  But scholarship tax credits, while technically a bit more complex to explain that charters and ESA's, may provide an additional school choice strategy with broad public appeal.

Louisville businessman Charles Leis, president of the 501c3 non-profit group EdChoice Kentucky, recently sat down with CN2 reporter Nick Storm to explain how scholarship tax credits work.  Watch the video below (disclaimer: I serve on the board of directors for EdChoice Kentucky).

 

As Charlie explains, scholarship tax credits rely solely on private donations to fund scholarships for students to attend non-public schools.  The tax credit encourages such donations without changing the funding for traditional public schools, and ultimately saves taxpayers money because there are fewer students in those schools to educate.  Read more about scholarship tax credits and how they might work in Kentucky at the links below.

(Usual disclaimer: All views expressed on this blog are mine alone and do not represent Western Kentucky University or the Kentucky Board of Education).

Related posts:

• Scholarship tax credits: Kentucky's best chance for school choice
• Tuition assistance tax credit expands educational options for Kentucky families
• Poll: Kentuckians strongly support school choice

A high school diploma that really means something

We know that Kentucky's high school graduation rates are improving, even if we're not sure how they really compare to other states.  That is probably a good thing; if students aren't staying in school we have no chance to educate them.  But in the long run, a diploma only has value if it means that students have mastered a certain level of knowledge and skill.  New research from the Bluegrass Institute shows that some Kentucky school districts are doing a remarkably good job of ensuring their high school diplomas really represent some measure of achievement, while others need a lot of improvement.

Using public data on 2014-2015 district report cards (the latest year for which such data are available), Richard Innes, education analyst for the Bluegrass Institute, has compared districts' graduation rates with two other measures of student achievement: college and career readiness rates, and the percentages of students who pass the state-required Algebra II end-of-course assessment.  [Note: I serve on the Bluegrass Institute Board of Scholars, so I had an early look at these data but did not contribute to the analysis].

The way schools calculate the percentage of students who have achieved college or career readiness (CCR) is complicated and subject to some debate as to its validity, but CCR currently counts toward 20% of a high school's overall accountability score, so it's an important, if limited, measure.  To account for the possible validity concerns with CCR, Innes also considered another measure of student achievement: Algebra II end-of-course (EOC) exam passing rates.  Currently all Kentucky students must pass an Algebra II class to graduate from high school.  But students don't have to actually pass the state Algebra II exam (the Kentucky Department of Education recommends schools make the EOC worth at least 20% of the student's final grade in the course, but this means a student could easily fail the exam and still pass the class.)

Since it is a more comprehensive measure, Innes used CCR to calculate an "effective graduation rate" for each district: in other words, the percentage of students who started in a district as freshmen and then not only graduated, but graduated college or career ready. He then calculated the gap between the reported and "effective" graduation rates, and ranked the districts by size of the gap.  For the second analysis, he calculated the gap between reported graduation rate and the district's Algebra II proficiency rate and again ranked districts by the size of their gaps.  You can access spreadsheets detailing district-by-district results for both analyses by clicking here and scrolling to the bottom of the post.

These data reveal that the graduation gap based on CCR rate varies from as much as 57 points (Covington Independent) to as little as 2 points (Jenkins Independent; see data for the highest and lowest graduation/effective grad rate gaps here).  I spent seven years working as a school and district administrator in the Simpson County Schools, and I'm pleased to note that this district was one of the best in this regard.  In 2014-2015, Simpson County graduated 93.9% of its students on time, and 91.6% of those graduates were also rated as college or career ready.  This makes for an effective graduation rate of 86%, a gap of only 7.9 points, the third best in the state.

When it comes to comparing graduation rates against Algebra II EOC, the numbers are more troubling with gaps ranging from a high of 91.9 (Washington County) to Caverna Independent on the low (positive) end, which had slightly more students pass the Algebra II EOC than actually graduated.  Note that Caverna's overall graduation rate of 76.7% is distressingly low, a situation I'm sure the district is trying to address, but stakeholders can be pleased that students who do achieve the high school diploma in that district are proficient in Algebra II.

I'm most interested in districts from the Green River Regional Educational Cooperative (GRREC) region because those are the districts I primarily serve in my role at the university.  I'm pleased that several GRREC districts were among the best at ensuring students who graduate are also proficient in Algebra II.  Grayson County, Glasgow Independent, Todd County, and LaRue County were all top performers in this regard (see a chart highlighting the biggest and smallest graduation/Algebra II EOC gaps here).  I'd be curious to know if these districts require a higher percentage of the EOC in students' final Algebra II grades, and if that has anything to do with their relative success.

These are district data, of course, so if a district has more than one high school there could be significance variance within that district that doesn't show up on these spreadsheets.  [Update: As one reader points out, another limitation is that this analysis comes from only one year of data.  These numbers can fluctuate quite a lot from year to year so trend data would be very illuminating here in terms of districts' relative position.]

In this post I've tried to highlight districts that are doing well in making sure their diplomas really do represent a higher level of student learning, but of course the real story is that this gap is so large for so many districts in the first place.  As I noted last week, we can easily lapse into distracting "happy talk" about the state of education and miss the damning evidence that we've go to do much, much better overall.  I hope state and district leaders will study these data carefully and prioritize lifting student achievement at least as much as we've raised graduation rates.  That would be a good start.

Update (8/16): To address the question of how Kentucky's low-income students are doing in these analyses (relevant given the recent, flawed Johns Hopkins University report that alleges Kentucky is outperforming other states in improving graduation rates for students who receive free and reduced lunch), Bluegrass Institute education analyst Richard Innes has also looked proficiency rates on the Algebra II EOC and CCR rates just for this target group.  This analysis just looked at statewide rates, but reveals a similar gap. 

The statewide reported graduation rate for low-income students in 2014-2015 was 84% (the overall rate for all students was 87%), but only 27% of low-income students passed the Alebra II EOC, a gap of 57 points.  Details here.

Of the low-income students who graduated statewide in 2015, only 55% were identified as college or career ready, which makes for an effective graduation rate of 46% for that group, a gap of 37 points.  Details here.

Realistically, we have no idea how those numbers compare to other states, but it affirms that the achievement gap takes many forms, and the gap between receiving a diploma and valid measures of life readiness is one that educators and policy makers must address.

Usual disclaimer: All opinions expressed on this blog are mine alone and do not reflect the views of Western Kentucky University or the Kentucky Board of Education.

Image above from the public domain, Creative Commons Zero.

Related posts:

• Let's move past the "happy talk" about education in Kentucky
• How does Kentucky's education system stack up against other states?

Let's move past the "Happy Talk" about education in Kentucky

Last week Johns Hopkins University's Civic Engagement and Everyone Graduates Center released a report recognizing Kentucky's improved graduation rate.  According to its authors, Kentucky is especially doing a better job than other states in helping low-income students graduate.  The report was widely circulated and celebrated in the state's education community.

Obviously it's a good thing that our graduation rates are improving.  Educators and policymakers should be congratulated for that.  If kids aren't staying in school, then we have no chance to educate them.  But like so many other state-to-state comparisons of education, this report has some methodological problems that challenge its validity, and draws conclusions based on unsubstantiated generalizations.  Terry Brooks, executive director of the Kentucky Youth Advocates, calls this "happy talk" and he's right; it distracts us from some of the significant problems our educational system needs to confront with more rigorous reform.

The Johns Hopkins report, called For All Kids: How Kentucky is Closing the High School Graduation Gap for Low-Income Students, uses a comparison of graduation rates for students receiving free and reduced lunch to draw its conclusions about Kentucky's performance against other states.  But in 2010 the U. S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the federal free lunch program, started implementing a provision that allows schools with at least 40 percent of students participating in the program to offer free lunch to all students, regardless of income level. 

Kentucky still collects free lunch eligibility data from parents to ensure we have accurate numbers, but some states or local districts do not.  This means we can no longer tell for sure if students receiving free lunch across the country are actually from low-income families.  This is a big problem for education research in general, and it undermines the validity of any cross-state comparisons using this metric.

But an even bigger problem with the For All Kids report is that it makes some generalizations about the possible reasons for Kentucky's improved graduation rates that are not backed up with any empirical evidence and actually contradict existing data.  For example, the executive summary of the report suggests that Kentucky has managed to improve its graduation rate because we don't have charter schools:

Kentucky has no charter schools.  Many education leaders credit the lack of this option with strengthening the public schools and districts because parents are more invested in their community schools, and there is greater impetus for districts to improve their schools.

This statement, besides citing no actual data and quoting unnamed "education leaders," makes no logical sense and defies existing evidence.  How does denying families an educational choice make parents more invested in the only option available to them?  How does not having any source of competition for all but the most affluent families give districts an impetus to improve their schools?  Furthermore, research indicates that charter schools actually graduate students at higher rates than traditional schools do.  The For All Kids report reflects a bias on the part of the authors that has no place in an ostensibly objective work of scholarship.

For All Kids also contains factual errors, such as claiming that Beechwood Independent and Burgin Independent school districts have low-income student graduation rates of 75%, among the lowest in the state.  This statement is simply untrue, as a look at the Kentucky school report cards for both districts will confirm (and staff at the Kentucky Department of Education have also confirmed).

The report includes case studies of several districts that have been successful in improving their graduation rates.  This is perhaps the most valuable part of For All Kids as other schools might glean insights about how similar strategies would apply to their contexts.  But unfortunately the usefulness of these case studies is overshadowed by other problems in the report.

Additionally, what isn't mentioned in the celebration of Kentucky's improved graduation rates is the large number of students who are graduating but aren't demonstrating any meaningful readiness for college or careers.  Recent and forthcoming research from the Bluegrass Institute (where I serve on the Board of Scholars) shows that some districts do a much better job than others in guaranteeing their diploma means something.

Again, it's a very good thing that more kids are graduating.  If they don't persist until graduation we have no chance of making them college or career ready.  But now that we've made some progress on this issue, let's turn our efforts to making sure that our diplomas aren't just a form of social promotion and actually guarantee a student has met learning goals.

Everyone needs to indulge some happy talk now and then to keep us encouraged.  But the rate of education improvement in Kentucky, however real, is so slow we don't have the luxury of much celebration (especially celebrations fraught with the errors of the For All Kids report).  Let's reserve that energy for ramping up our reform efforts.

Usual disclaimer: Opinions expressed on this blog are mine alone and do not reflect the views of Western Kentucky University or the Kentucky Board of Education.

Related posts:

• How does Kentucky's education system stack up against other states?
• Listen to my TeachThought podcast interview about school choice, innovation, and accountability
• Charter school opponents spread misinformation