Kentucky Teachers in the Know Q&A

On Saturday I was honored to be part of a terrific panel of invited guests at the Kentucky Teachers in the Know Conference for a Cause. The conference was organized by Rowan County special education teacher Allison Slone, who appeared with me on a recent episode of KET's Kentucky Tonight and who has become a friend and trusted colleague. Allison established Kentucky Teachers in the Know as a public Facebook group, now including 19,000 members, to be a forum for teachers to be better informed about and engaged in public policy issues. The conference, which also benefited Grace Parr, a delightful young lady with juvenile diabetes, was a chance for teachers to share ideas, network face to face, and to meet key education policy leaders from across Kentucky.

I deeply admire Allison's passion about education and especially her efforts to bring together people with diverse perspectives to seek common ground through civil dialogue. I believe the panel discussion revealed how committed we all are to helping accelerate student learning, even when we differ on strategy. 

Allison sent panelists questions in advance so that we might prepare, but of course the dialogue was so rich we weren't able to address all the questions on Saturday. Below I offer some brief responses to the questions Allison prepared for me. I'm so grateful for the chance to respond, and especially to meet so many dedicated and hard-working teachers. I invite anyone who attended the conference but didn't get a chance to talk with me one-on-one, and anyone in general, to reach out to me to share your concerns, pose additional questions, and help me be better informed about the issues. Email me at [email protected] or [email protected], and I can follow up by phone also if that's what you prefer.

Questions for all of the panelists:

In a few words, what is the mission of our system of common schools? In other words, what do we want our schools to do?

I hold a fairly "classical" understanding of the purpose of education: our system of schools exists to help families and the community prepare children for a life of virtuous citizenship. This means that graduates should be able to live a self-sufficient life, but also understand their obligations to society and the greater good. In this sense, the education system cannot serve its mission apart from the role that families and communities also play in achieving this purpose.

I also believe that the United States is truly exceptional and represents the pinnacle of the modern, Western democratic liberal order which has brought the world a miraculous and unprecedented level of freedom and prosperity. The American education system also exists to help citizens have a proper appreciation for that achievement and to be capable of intellectually defending it and actively participating in public life in ways that will help preserve our republic and the freedom and prosperity that comes with it.

When it comes to curricular topics, which of these is the single most important: reading; mathematics; science; civics; or arts?

I consider all of these subjects of equal importance but I'm especially interested in how social studies, science, and the arts actually support reading. As educators, we have recently been conditioned to view reading comprehension as a kind of generic, stand alone skill. But in fact comprehension depends heavily on vocabulary, and vocabulary is usually connected in some way to specific subject domains. In our well-intentioned effort to focus on reading and math, our elementary schools have increasingly neglected subjects like social studies, science, and the arts. This has exacerbated achievement gaps, since children from affluent and well-educated families will get exposure to this content outside of the school day, but children of poverty usually do not. To better support long-term reading comprehension, I think we need to focus on a much richer early grades curriculum.

How would you address the differing needs of small/large, rural/suburban/urban, and diverse (ethnic/socioeconomic, regular/special ed) public districts and public schools?

This question connects in many ways to my response below on my goals for Kentucky's schools. Here, let me just say that I would like to see a much greater blend of more resources, greater autonomy, and much deeper local engagement with our schools. All three of these components are needed to make sure that the unique needs of each kind of individual school and district can be met. Schools definitely need more resources (greater funding), but they also need teachers, parents, and educators empowered in ways that help them innovate strategies that work best in their local context, and they need a greater level of support and involvement from local communities to bolster their improvement efforts, both in terms of holding schools more accountable for improving education outcomes, but also in providing more help in addressing the many social, economic, and emotional needs that children bring with them to school.

What are your ideas for recruiting and retaining highly skilled teachers for public schools?

The Kentucky Department of Education has launched a multi-tiered effort at teacher recruitment called GoTeach Kentucky. This is a starting point for what I hope can be a statewide conversation about an extremely important issue. The issue of teacher recruitment can't fully be addressed without also talking about improving teacher pay, however, and I believe we should also rethink the way we compensate teachers so that improved salaries have the desired effect of also improving student learning outcomes. I wrote more about this here. Finally, it's important to note that the teacher shortage is not unique to Kentucky and it predates our recent, heated discussions about pension reform and other education topics. So pension reform is not contributing to this decline in interest in the teaching profession, but I think it actually has the potential to help teacher recruitment in the long run. 

While I believe strongly that the existing pension system should be preserved for current retirees and active employees, I think future employees would actually find a more flexible, hybrid style pension plan that helps them build wealth that belongs to them, is portable across states (and careers), and is not dependent on future politicians keeping the promises made by past politicians, much more attractive. The existing system works well for people who enter the profession out of college and spend 30 years on the job. It is much less beneficial for second career teachers or those who will eventually leave teaching for other jobs, and both of those groups will always make up a sizable and extremely important portion of our teaching force. No one enters the teaching profession because of the pension, but teaching benefit packages should be generous and flexible and I believe a hybrid plan will better suit future generations of teachers.

Would you be willing to spend one entire day in a public school… from the 5 am bus ride to the classroom, through recess, specials, MAP testing, to lunch and snack, faculty meeting, and then work concessions at a basketball game? Warning...if you say yes, we will be signing you up today with one of our guests to make this happen.

I've visited hundreds of schools and thousands of classrooms in my career. It's my favorite part of my job. Sign me up.

What is your goal for Kentucky’s public schools in two years? Five years? Ten years?

Within ten years my goal would be that we have students achieving at much higher levels of proficiency in all subject areas and that we would have made significant progress toward closing achievement gaps. To get there, I believe several additional goals will have to be met. These are inter-dependent goals, in that just doing one of them will likely not have the desired effect of rapidly improving student learning, but the combination may create an environment where that is much more likely.

First, I believe that we need more resources in the form of higher per pupil spending in the SEEK formula, plus full state funding of important dimensions of school operations for which districts are currently bearing a considerable load, including all day kindergarten and transportation.

This increase of funding needs to be accompanied by a much deeper focus on improving the rigor of regular classroom instruction through a much more thoughtful emphasis on teacher training and development and a more intentional effort at curriculum planning at the school and district level.

Third, the experience of other states suggests to me that empowering teachers, parents, and students through expanding the educational options available to families helps to foster an environment of innovation and improvement, especially for low-income, at-risk learners. See more in the links below about why I support school choice and how such policies work. These are not silver bullets, of course, but in the presence of other improvements like expanded per pupil funding and greater autonomy for all schools, charter schools, scholarship tax credits, and open district enrollment can be powerful levers on behalf of vulnerable students (they are the only real beneficiaries of such policies, since affluent families already have and exercise choices in who educates their children).

Finally, the only way to achieve our education goals is if there is a revival of interest and concern on the part of local communities for our schools. We have asked schools to vastly improve student learning outcomes at the same time we have asked them to address every social, emotional, and economic need from which our children suffer. Families and communities must simultaneously demand more of their schools in terms of student outcomes while exercising a much greater level of responsibility and engagement in supporting that effort, especially at the level of meeting individual student needs. There should be a kind of Prichard Committee in every community - a critical mass of parents, educators, and community leaders with a hair-on-fire sense of urgency for helping all our students succeed through higher-quality schools and greater local engagement.

Some individual questions tailored specifically for me:

I’m going to give you a scenario. In 2026, a family of three children are given vouchers to attend a private school of their choice using the seek money that would have been provided to the local public school system. By November, the family isn’t satisfied with the education their child is receiving and returns all three of them to the public schools. This is the tenth family in that particular school district to do so this school year. Does the SEEK money return with the child and if not, how does the public school afford to educate them with zero dollars? As we all know, the public school can not lawfully turn them away.

First, this scenario is actually impossible under Kentucky's constitution, which would effectively prohibit a voucher program (see more on why this is the case, and how policies like vouchers differ from other school choice mechanisms, here). But if you take out the voucher part and just ask what happens if students change schools mid-year, then you're describing something that happens every day. Students switch schools and districts after the school year starts, and the SEEK money doesn't move with them until the next year. This is something school leaders are thoroughly prepared to deal with, and that would not change under a school choice scenario. The truth is, affluent families make choices in terms of who educates their children, and we accept that as parents trying to make the best decision for their individual children. But lower-income families usually cannot exercise such options, and that is a fundamentally unjust inequity. See more on school choice in the links below.

You recently wrote “Consistent with my own observations from thousands of classrooms visits over the years, the Opportunity Myth demonstrates that in far too many schools students are not being challenged with rigorous, grade appropriate content and lessons. And sadly, children of poverty and children of color are far more likely to be deprived of meaningful and challenging learning tasks.” Could the fact that teachers are being asked to do more and more beyond the task of teaching be a barrier to providing rigorous content and lessons? If so, how do we get back to the art of educating instead of meeting a thousand demands in a seven hour day?

Absolutely that's a factor. How we help teachers get back to the art of educating is, at least in part, addressed by some of the goals I described above. I would also point out that in the post referenced above about the Opportunity Myth, I discussed how schools and districts need to support teachers by adopting more explicit curricula and instructional materials and rethink our approach to systems of intervention which I think greatly contribute to this problem.

Again, I'm so grateful for the chance to answer these questions and engage with teachers. Thanks again to Allison Slone and Kentucky Teachers in the Know for the opportunity.I look forward to additional discussions in the future.

Usual disclaimer: Views expressed on this website are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect opinions of anyone else affiliated with Western Kentucky University (where I am professor of educational administration, leadership, and research) or the Kentucky Board of Education (where I am a member and chair of the Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment Committee).

Related links:

• Bringing classical education to more Kentucky schools
• Why Knowledge Matters: The most important education book of 2016
• Yes, it's time to rethink teacher pay in Kentucky
• Will Kentucky finally get meaningful pension reform?
• Is education in Kentucky "under attack?"
• The fight for school choice in Kentucky goes on
• A School Choice Primer, Parts I, II, and III
• Every school should confront the "Opportunity Myth"