Technology for learning: a Kentucky commitment

The Kentucky EdGuide on "School Technology and Digital Learning" spotlights Kentucky's long-running work to make technology a consistent feature of education across the state:

Since 1990, Kentucky has been committed to strong technology implementation under a series of statewide Kentucky Education Technology System (KETS) master plans. KETS sets standards for school technology purposes, provides technical services, ensures high speed network access, and funds technology strategies to support the learning environment. Because technology innovation is so rapid, that system needs regular upgrades to allow students and teachers to use current software and applications. Annually, Kentucky also offers matching funds to help school districts make purchases to keep up with those rising standards.

Because technology innovations come so rapidly, it's important to note both how many devices are available and how many meet minimum standards for current use. The EdGuide chart at the right shows student student instructional devices (desktop, laptop, and tablet computers) in Kentucky schools, using Technology Readiness Survey data from the Kentucky Department of Education and showing separately the devices that did and did not meet that year’s KETS minimum standards.

The "School Technology and Digital Learning" EdGuide also  answers these key questions:

• How does Kentucky support active use of technology in education? 
• Can students use their own devices at school? 
• What is digital learning? 
• What kinds of digital learning opportunities are available? 
• What evidence shows digital learning results for Kentucky students? 

Do check it out, along with the other EdGuides available for easy download from the Prichard Committee website.

--Posted by Susan Perkins Weston

Meeting Young Students' Needs: Response to Intervention

Response to Intervention is a relatively new term in Kentucky education law. In the Prichard Committee's Kentucky EdGuide on "Students Who Need Added Support," the main idea is explained this way:

Response to Intervention or “RTI” is a new state initiative, required for the primary years.

Response to Intervention calls for schools to organize instruction by setting up tiers of response that start with a core program that will be effective for most students and then add supplemental support and then intensive intervention when evidence shows which students need different or additional support. For example, a student who consistently struggles with the core program (tier 1) may receive some added opportunities (tier 2) and then if that support is not enough, move to more intensive support (tier 3).

In parent-teacher discussions, it may help to ask what “tier” of services a child is receiving and then for details about how that tier works.

The RTI requirements can be found in a new state statute enacted in 2013 (KRS 158.305) and in the Kentucky Board of Education regulation on "The Use of Response-to-Intervention in Kindergarten through Grade 3" (704 KAR 3:095).

Interested readers may also want to learn about the Kentucky System of Intervention, an approach recommended by the Kentucky Department of Education for students from kindergarten through grade 12, offering ideas for implementing RTI-methods to serve students well even in the grades where the law does not require it.

Or, to learn about Kentucky's other supports for students' varied needs, check out the EdGuides on:
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• Students Who Need Added Support
• Students with Disabilities
• Students Ready for Added Challenge
• English Language Learners
• Poverty and Non-Academic Barriers to Learning
• Digital Learning and School Technology
• Student Conduct and Discipline
• School Safety

--Posted by Susan Perkins Weston

Tempest in an open meetings teapot

The Courier-Journal summarizes a recent opinion of the Attorney General about how a recent Jefferson County board member was chosen:

Conway said that if the three-member committee that interviewed four women for the open school board seat was created by the Kentucky Board of Education — a public agency — then the law was violated. But if it was created by Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday, it was not.

The puzzle to me has been why there's any confusion about who named the committee.  The new article has solved that puzzle for me:

“On the KDE website, they say that the committee was created by the state board,” said Jon Fleischaker, an attorney for The Courier-Journal. “If that is the case, they violated the law by meeting in secret and for not following the process for going into closed session.”

On the one hand, state law has said for twenty years that the Commissioner appoints replacements to local boards, and state practice for just about that long has been that the Commissioner asks a small group for advice on that choice.  A review of KBE minutes will show no action taken to appoint the group in question,  and a review of KBE videotape will show no discussion of doing so--and both are easily available on line.  

On the other hand, the C-J can hardly be faulted for thinking the KDE website was a trustworthy source on KDE policy and practice.

It sure sounds like the website carried a small but serious inaccuracy.  Now the puzzle is why a small but serious correction attached to a small but serious apology wasn't an adequate solution for all concerned.

Is principal selection about to change?

The House Education Committee has reported out House Bill 322 on principal selection. Since I watched on-line, I don't yet have a copy of the substitute language added during the committee meeting, but I"m confident I've got the main idea.

Since 1990, Kentucky law has called for school councils to select principals, with the big debate being over the role of the superintendent in deciding who could be considered for the job.

The Department long advised that the council only got to consider qualified applicants, and that only people the superintendent recommended were qualified. If a superintendent recommended only two people, the council needed to choose from that pair.

The Kentucky Supreme Court, however, rejected that interpretation in 2004, and read the law to say that when councils ask for additional applicants, the superintendent cannot hold back applicants based on his or her judgment about whether they can be effective.

Today's committee vote was on language that would let the superintendent submit three names to the council and give the council three weeks to choose between them.

I'm not opposed to the change. Student success requires highly effective principals. To be effective, new principals must start work with the support both of their councils and their superintendents. The method in the amended bill will provide that shared support, so I think it's okay.

On the other hand, I'm not excited about it. That's because I know that most principals already come in with strong support from their superintendents.

First, the superintendents I admire most invest deeply in working with their councils, and when it's time to select principals, they have substantial influence on the results.

Second, many potential principals know they can't succeed without strong support, so they don't even apply if they won't have the superintendent's backing. I've seen two kinds of exceptions. One is that a principal with local roots may try to wait out a superintendent who isn't from the area, The other is that in the largest districts, principals don't expect to spend much time working closely with the superintendent, so they seem to be less concerned about making sure that relationship will be a warm one. In general, though, principals only go where they're wanted, and that includes being wanted by the superintendent.

Knowing all of that, if HB 322 becomes law, I do not think it will change the outcome in most principal selections.

(For readers who do not already know, I worked for the Kentucky Association of School Councils from its founding until 2006.)

Open records, citizenship, and a tiny KDE change

Since 1992, the Department of Education has had its own regulation on how to request Open Records, with the current edition here. In June, though, the state board of education voted to repeal that regulation, and instead follow a standard regulation for all state agencies, available here.

This is not a big change. Mainly, it will mean that once the change becomes final, we should all submit our requests to the Commissioner's office, rather than to "the Records Officer, Associate Commissioner, Office of Management Information Services."

If you want to inspect Department of Education, you submit a written request and you're entitled to see almost anything. The only exceptions come from a statutory list of documents that can be kept private.

If you want copies, you should expect a small fee: 10¢ a page for paper copies, and a custom fee for things like photographs and digital records that will only include copying costs and not include staff time.

As an added tip, it's always worth checking the KDE website first. If you can figure out who's got the thing you want that's not available on-line, it's also worth asking that person to send it by e-mail at no cost at all. You only need an Open Records request when both of those less formal methods fail--but it's still a helpful back-up.

The same rules--except for who you ask--apply to all Kentucky districts and schools.

About the picture: My mother taught me early that government documents are public documents, and asking to see them is as American as apple pie and Fourth of July parades. That small illustration has long been my personal reminder that asking for the documents we want is a serious bit of citizenship in action.

Councils, schools, and judging

In the implementation of school-based decision making, I eventually concluded that we'd never get done wrestling with the word "school." It turns out to be tricky to tell exactly where a given school ends and something else begins. Here are some examples:

School A serves primary to grade 12. The board decides to create a P-8 elementary and a high school under the same roof, each with a separate council. Can it do that? Answer: Yes, because the board still decides when to open schools, close schools, and change school facilities.

Elementary school B serves all the district's primary students and all the district's preschool students. The school's principal also evaluates all the primary and preschool teachers. In effect, it's a seamless preschool to grade 5 school. Do the parents of preschoolers get to vote for parent members of the council? Answer: Yes, they do, because their children are students at that school.

Elementary school C is located in the same building as a district-wide preschool program. Children from that preschool go on to all the district's elementary programs, and the district preschool program director evaluates the teachers. Do preschool parents and teachers vote for the elementary council. Answer: No, even though they share a roof, the elementary and the preschool are separate operations.

High school D is located on a large lot. The sign out front lists only the high school's name. Most classes are held in a large main building. Across the parking lot, some students of high school age study in a separate building, to which they have been assigned after discipline problems. The principal of the school evaluates the teachers of both buildings. Do teachers in the separate building get to vote for teachers on the council, and does SBDM otherwise apply to what happens there? Answer: Yes, the separate building is part of the high school. (That was in the early 1990s. Today, a similar program might be more formally and clearly defined as a separate alternative program under the 1998 School Safety Act.)

High school E is notified that the board of education wants for two classrooms to be used for a family resource center serving all the district's elementary schools. Doesn't that impinge on the high school council's policy authority over space? Answer: No, because the board is still responsible for facilities. The board can decide that the high school is locates in the whole building located at 123 Champion Lane, or that it's located in almost all of that building, but not in the two classrooms it wants for the resource center.

High school F is located on the same campus as a district alternative program. The alternative program has no cafeteria. The district wants the alternative program students to use the high school lunchroom at a time when other students are not there. Can the district do that without council consent? Answer: Yes, just as the elementary and high school carved out of school A share a cafeteria, this board can divide a facility by space and time for two operations to share it. However, the council is entitled to set schedule and space policies for all the facilities its school can use, so the board needs to set a clear timetable of when each operation gets the cafeteria.

Elementary school G has a rundown building. The district builds a new facility nearby, initially calling it a new building for school G. The plan is that all students and teachers from school G will move to that building the next fall, no other students and teachers will move there. Then the board decides to give the new building a different name. Does the council elected at school G in the spring serve the next year, or is it a new school that needs to elect a new council? Answer: No, that's the same school with a name change: the council stays.

In short, the SBDM law's provisions that schools must have councils, that the school's teachers and parents vote, and that the council's policies govern the school seem sharply defined, but the facts can make a person work to apply the law. You have to listen, get the details, get some more details, and think carefully before forming a settled view of how the law applies to specific situations.

This post is my reflection on Judge Sotomayor's confirmation hearings. The "school" questions taught me that one can be rigorously committed to the letter of law and still wrestle with the careful application of that law to complex facts, and also that in the wrestling, wide experience will help one do a better job. (The judge finished law school in 1979 and I entered in 1982, so no, we have not met.)

Spotlight on OEA?

In the early 1990s, the Office of Education Accountability was regularly in the news. OEA investigations generated multiple cases where Commissioner Boysen brought charges and the state board conducted removal hearings. And then, around the time Boysen left Kentucky and Penney Sanders left OEA, that stopped.

It's been a puzzle. I'm sure district leaders got used to their new legal duties, and misconduct declined. But did it end, like a faucet suddenly turning off? Or did Did OEA stop uncovering it and sending cases to KDE? Or--option 3--did KDE stop bringing charges in cases OEA referred?

Ronnie Ellis of the CNHI news service has now offered a clue:

Lisa Gross, KDE spokeswoman, said no board members have been removed in Kentucky since the mid-1990s. She said such tough OEA recommendations are typically referred to the Education Professional Standards Board or the Attorney General’s Office.

“Generally, we point out the error and help them fix it,” she said of OEA recommendations to local boards.

Moberly would like to see the OEA given more enforcement authority in such cases. But he said OEA findings are usually effective even without additional enforcement power.

“No school district likes for OEA to come in,” Moberly said. “So when OEA makes suggestions, the district usually feels they have to follow them.”

The full Richmond Register article is here. It sure sounds like KDE is saying they don't bring charges--even though the law makes that a duty of the Commissioner. And it also sounds like Representative Moberly is not fully satisfied with that arrangement.

FAQ: What are CSIPs, CDIPs, and improvement plans?

School improvement plans are organized documents setting out a school's challenges and its strategies for improving student performance. That term is used nationwide.

In Kentucky, schools develop versions called CSIPs or comprehensive school improvement plans. A CSIP is comprehensive because it fulfills multiple planning requirements in a single document. For example, a CSIP meets schools’ obligation to plan ways to close achievement gaps, to plan improvements required by federal Title 1 funding, and plan professional development for school staff. The equivalent district documents are called CDIPs or comprehensive district improvement plans.

In CSIP/CDIP discussions:

• Needs assessment is a process of collecting and analyzing data, in order to identify priority needs and set goals. Information might be collected from student testing, teacher, parent or student surveys, focus groups or other means. The needs assessment is the starting point for developing a CSIP or CDIP.
  
• Components are sections of the plan spelling out steps to meet one plan goal, usually including activities, timelines, budgets, and a division of responsibilities.
• Implementation and impact checks (or I & I Checks) are periodic activities to check that the work listed in the plan is getting done on schedule, look at evidence about whether the work is achieving the needed results, and decide if changes are needed to get things back on track.