Thursday, December 24, 2009

Easier said than done (a college teaching debate)

A Chronicle piece entitled "I Hate Myself When I'm Teaching" just caught my eye. It's a letter from a second-year professor exhausted by what she's doing and unsatisfied by the classroom results, with an answer from "Ms. Mentor" that comes way too close to telling the writer that it's fine just to accept lots of students engaging little and learning less.

No. No, no, no. No.

I delivered workshops for two years before I did a good one. I did them for five years before, handed better materials by a colleague, I finally experienced leading a great one.

Good teaching is a learnable craft, a teachable skill, a profession that requires systematic development. Settling for frustrating most of your students and never quite being happy and at ease in their company is unnecessary and unworthy.

Mercifully, the comments are better than the "mentor," by more than a mile. The first great resister says:
Changing your attitude will surely help. But learning to teach well is what will help the most. Find out who the best teachers (not the best researchers, nor the easiest teachers) are on your campus and talk with them about their methods.
For new teachers at every level, my New Year's wish is that you find great colleagues--the ones ready to collaborate, to share teaching techniques that make their students come alive, and to lure you into a lifetime of seeking and finding the methods that work for each new group of students you meet. There isn't any better work than successful teaching, and there isn't any better place to be than among educators willing to help you succeed.

Ho, ho, ho!

Signing off for the family Christmas celebration and the associated feast of conversation with my near-and-dear ones. Back on January 2.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

RTTT without charters

"Our application will not have any provision for charter schools in it because we don't think there will be adequate time or support in the legislature by the deadline we're facing," Holliday said.
The Herald-Leader has that quote and more on Kentucky's likely decision to apply for Race to the Top while being frank about the weak state interest in charter schools.

Monday, December 21, 2009

Admit fewer to remediate fewer?

Inside Higher Ed's article on rising math standards for admission has important detail on Kentucky's pending move to a higher readiness requirement on the mathematics section of the ACT and some developing responses from postsecondary institutions:

Sue Cain, coordinator of developmental education and the college readiness initiative for the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, said a number of four-year institutions in the state are considering raising their admissions standards so that they will not have to offer remedial courses. In Kentucky, she noted, each public institution must provide remedial coursework to any students it chooses to admit. Practically, this means all but the state’s two research institutions -- the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville -- offer numerous remedial options for their students because their admissions standards allow for students who need remediation.
The whole article is worth a read both for multistate perspective and for other insight on the Kentucky changes. Earlier PrichBlog reporting on this transition can be found here and here.

Sustained high school math (we're ahead)

Inside Higher Ed reports:

Aiming to improve student proficiency and achievement in mathematics, multiple systems of higher education have recently raised either their minimum standards for admission or their benchmarks for enrollment in credit-bearing courses in the subject.

The University System of Maryland made such a revision to its undergraduate admissions policy two weeks ago, when its Board of Regents approved a measure requiring that entering students take four mathematics courses in high school instead of the previously required three: algebra I, geometry and algebra II.
Kentucky decided years ago to require four years of math for every high school graduate (not just those going to college) starting with the class of 2012 students who now in their sophomore year.

Substantial: The impact of the Rose litigation



The Campaign for Educational Equity releases today the second report in its Education, Equity, and the Law series, "Substantial and Yet Not Sufficient: Kentucky's Effort to Build Proficiency for Each and Every Child" written by Susan Perkins Weston, independent consultant working on Kentucky education issues, and Robert F. Sexton, executive director of the Prichard Committee.

"Substantial and Yet Not Sufficient" provides an analytic overview of the origins, impact and implications of Kentucky's landmark educational adequacy litigation, Rose v. Council for Better Education. It provides important new material and insights regarding the political mobilization for school reform, legislative action, statewide implementation, and recent fiscal difficulties that have occurred over the past 20 years since the case was decided. The authors make their case that Kentucky's 1989 court ruling and 1990 legislation unquestionably led to substantive improvement for all students in the state. Based on their experience, they also share a set of thoughts about what counts as successful work to build school systems that serve all students well.


That's from the official announcement. Bob and I are delighted to be part of this important series, and the paper is available for download here.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Geography of poverty


Those numbers offer a mighty clear pattern: our highest child poverty is in Southeastern Kentucky, while our lowest is ringed around Louisville, Lexington, and Cincinnati.

This data and much more is available in the the new Kentucky Kids Count Databook here.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Episodic memory and effective teaching


In the body of brain research that matters for effective instruction, one of the issues is understanding how human memory works. Episodic memory is one of the most powerful kinds, attached to strong emotions and important events.

From 1963 to 2001, the simplest way to explain episodic memory was to ask a single question: "Where were you when you heard that Kennedy had been shot?" That was the great shared episode. Even people too young to have a personal answer understood how it worked from experiencing the emotions of people a bit older.

In 2001, of course, we got a new question: "Where were you when you heard that the Towers had been hit?" Some middle school and most high school students have first-hand answers, and my guess is that most elementary students can already share their parents' stories. That matters for teaching because new learning is the most effective when students can connect it to something they already know and value. Showing students how a lesson in history or geography or culture is related to 9/11 is an important way to make the lesson meaningful in that class and memorable into the future.

All of which is a roundabout approach to the photo above, now running on the Daily Dish blog. The headline is "Rebuilding," and the caption reads "The Freedom Tower is finally reaching for the sky (at the fourth of 94 floors, to be exact)." I didn't know how deep my own episodic memory went until I looked at the picture and discovered that I was, again, in tears.

(Source note: my understanding of the research discussed above comes indirectly from Jensen's Teaching with the Brain in Mind and more directly from the extraordinarily memorable Brain Research workshop Ronda Harmon developed for the Kentucky Association of School Councils.)

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

12 percent graduate from college? That's not true.

Jack Brammer and Beth Musgrave reported by blog today that Speaker Greg Stumbo "said he was particularly alarmed to learn Tuesday that only 12 of every 100 students in Kentucky who enter the ninth grade graduate from college."

I'd be alarmed, too, if I though the 12 of 100 was true.

Fortunately, I know it is false.

For the last four years, our colleges and universities have awarded more than 18,000 bachelor's degrees per year. That could only be 12 percent of a ninth grade class if the ninth grade class in question had 150,000 students in it.

Our total population aged 5 to 17 has been between 700,000 and 750,000 for the last two decades. Dividing that equally over 13 grades, we should not have had more than 60,000 of the right age to enter high school in any of those years.

There is simply no way to fit the numbers together.

The 12 percent figure is simply, bluntly, not true.

RTTT: repeating costs versus one time investments

According to an Associated Press wire story:

The Louisiana School Boards Association voted to oppose state participation in a bid for up to $300 million in federal dollars....LSBA said that it is concerned local school districts would have problems financing improvements when federal dollars run out in four years.
That's a valid Race to the top issue if--but only if--the state plan adds recurring expenses.

The smarter way to use RTTT funds is for one-time investments with long-term benefits. For example, to:
  • Equipping all current teachers to implement balanced assessment, the core practice we've needed but not fully supported for two decades..
  • Equipping all our teacher preparation programs to nurture the same skills in future educators.
  • Designing, piloting, and implementing a permanent data system to track student growth from early childhood to college.
  • Retooling our evaluation systems to identify multiple levels of effectiveness, making sure the system has reliable results and broad support, with the intent of having it be a routine part of school and district work by 2014.
Some federal stimulus dollars go for roads and bridges, an infrastructure investment designed to strengthen commerce an communities for many years to come.

RTTT stimulus dollars ought to do support equivalent infrastructure, allowing us to do better work with our regular education resources for a generation after the grant runs out.

RTTT an urban game? I don't see it.

EdWeek's Politics K-12 blog reports that some states think Race to the Top is tilted to heavily urban states. They cite Vermont and North Dakota, which may be planning to wait until the second round of RTTT competition. As nearly as I can tell, the argument is mainly that charters are harder to implement in rural states, which does indeed fit Kentucky. There's also a suggestion that Vermont thinks it does not need to change how it distributes highly effective teachers, but I don't see the rural connection there.

For myself, I think a rural state--our rural state--can make up the lost charter points with a robust commitment to clear standards, strong assessments, potent data systems, effective evaluations and professional development, and a robust plan for turning around weak schools.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Evaluation complications: teachers without test scores

The District of Columbia is one of the first school systems to include student scores in individual teacher evaluations. As a sidebar to an article on Race to the Top criteria for evaluations, EdWeek shares the weights given to value-added results in D.C.'s approach, and I've graphed them above.

Wow.

That's two different evaluation programs, one for teachers whose students are tested in their subject, and another for teachers whose students are not tested that way. For one group, scores loom large, while for the other they play a tiny role. That's a disturbing difference, capable of dividing a school and providing perverse incentives for teachers to seek out transfers into untested subjects.

The Race to the Top criteria call for all states to ensure that "student growth" becomes "a significant factor" in teacher evaluations. Last week, the Kentucky Board of Education indicated starting support for Commissioner Holliday's desire to do something similar here. The graph above is, to my eyes, the best demonstration I've yet seen of just how challenging that effort is going to be.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Climbing to standards, twice over

In the balanced assessment discussion, there's a regular emphasis on:
  • Short, clear, high standards that are widely shared.
  • Local, hands-on work to break each standard down into smaller steps, done locally so that the people who will implement understand how the parts fit together.
  • Helping students see--early and often-- where they stand on those steps.
  • Ensuring that students see how to climb higher.
  • Working constantly to figure out the best way to help them climb.
When I try to sort through an effective model for building teaching quality, the ideas I find most convincing emphasize:
  • Clear, high, brief statewide standards for effective teachers and leaders.
  • District-level development of specific evaluation procedures, done locally to build hand-on understanding and support for implementing those procedures.
  • Setting the system up so that all the affected educators can identify which needed strengths they currently have.
  • Setting the system up so those same educators can see clearly how to become even stronger at their craft.
  • Expecting school leaders to work pretty much continuously on helping other educators build those needed capacities.
Yes, I see a deep parallel in the two designs, and I wrote those descriptions to highlight that. With stronger teaching, we could hugely reduce our current student achievement gaps. With stronger efforts on professional growth, we could have much more consistent teaching quality.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Almost $40 million already cut from SEEK program

Kentucky is sending districts $39,723,567 less in SEEK funds this year than the state provided last year.

Five districts are receiving more than ten percent less than they received last year :
  • Murray Independent: 21 percent of its SEEK allocation and $1,065,487
  • Frankfort Independent: 15 percent and $533,212
  • Lewis County: 12 percent and $1,451,375
  • Jackson Independent: 12 percent and $268,275
  • Lyon County: 10 percent and $252,727
Eleven districts are receiving more than $1 million less:
  • Jefferson County: $5,237,711 and 2 percent of its SEEK allocation
  • Pike County: $1,615,926 and 4 percent
  • Letcher County: $1,512,569 and 9 percent
  • Lewis County: $1,451,375 and 12 percent
  • Floyd County: $1,357,355 and 5 percent
  • Harlan County: $1,303,802 and 7 percent
  • Hopkins County: $1,253,451 and 4 percent
  • Perry County: $1,253,250 and 7 percent
  • Daviess County: $1,247,349 and 3 percent
  • Christian County: $1,214,699 and 3 percent
  • Murray Independent: $1,065,487 and 21 percent
Only 36 of 174 districts received a funding increase, and sixteen of those received increases of less than one percent.

So, let's stop saying the state hasn't cut P-12 funding yet. We've actually seen cuts to the Department of Education, the Education Professional Standards Board, and to smaller state funding grants, and we've seen nearly $40 million cut from SEEK itself.

To see figures for your own school district, click here to download a complete list.

To see my original sources, download KDE's 2008 2009 Revised SEEK Final Summary (dated 3/12/09) and
2009-10 SEEK Tentative Summary.xls (dated 9-16-09). In the 2009-10 file, notice that the "adjust to appropriation" column shows dollars that are coming from the federal stimulus legislation: I've added those into the amounts I'm counting as part of state spending.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Equity litigation and politics (in New Jersey)

In 1970, four New Jersey cities challenged the constitutionality of the state’s school
funding system, arguing that large wealth-based variations in per pupil expenditures across the state’s districts deprived students in low-wealth communities like theirs of a “thorough and efficient” education. Since then, in over 20 decisions handed down over the last 35 years, through Robinson v. Cahill (1973-1976) and later Abbott v. Burke (1985-2005), the New Jersey Supreme Court has sought to ensure that all students in New Jersey, particularly in distressed urban areas, have equal access to a quality education.
“Assessing Success in School Finance Litigation: The Case of New Jersey” is a lucid new telling of of the Robinson and Abbott sequence of cases. Written by Margaret Goertz and Michael Weiss, it's part of a new series from the Campaign for Educational Equity, and available here.

Comparing that story with ours, three things stand out.

First, the 2008 property tax base in the New Jersey's struggling high poverty districts was $455,794 per pupil. In 2007, Kentucky's statewide average assessment was $382,797 and only sixteen districts* had a stronger tax base than those Abbott districts. What the Garden State calls poor, the Bluegrass calls "relatively wealthy."

Second, the original Robinson ruling came in 1973, and the New Jersey court cases are still coming. Here, the Rose ruling came in 1989, and the Kentucky Education Reform Act was law less than a year later.

Finally, New Jersey is a splintered state on issues of school funding. A child in one of the original Robinson districts (East Orange) could walk out of her elementary school and be in one of the state's proudest and wealthiest districts (Glen Ridge) in less than five minutes--but that border is completely sealed if the question is how the two towns' very separate schools should be funded. In Kentucky, the SEEK formula truly has institutionalized the core concept that the state takes the lead in funding our schools, and all our districts have a shared stake in maintaining the SEEK guarantees.

We have our disagreements, our failures, and our unmet needs, but compared to New Jersey, we truly can speak of our commonwealth operating a system of common schools.

* Anchorage ($872,409), Southgate ($705,899), Fayette ($691,096), Boone ($622,251), Campbell ($609,173), Jefferson ($600,863), Lyon ($572,279), Kenton ($543,241), Beechwood ($525,020), Woodford ($524,683), Franklin ($503,754), Shelby ($471,828), Danville ($462,683), Fort Thomas ($458,687), Burgin ($458,224), and Oldham ($457,543).

Friday, December 4, 2009

Common core standards see (small) delay

Flypaper's Amber Winkler reports from a briefing this morning on the status of the Common Core language arts and mathematics standards:
  1. The K-12 back-mapped standards in reading and in math will be released for public comment on January 4th.
  2. “Early” February is still the timeline for the final draft of both the end-of-high-school standards and the back-mapped ones in both subjects.
That's not a big delay from the original timeline of being done by December 2009, but it does mean the Kentucky Board of Education will not meet the Senate Bill 1 deadline for new mathematics standards.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

College readiness benchmarks: rubber about to meet road

In 2007, the Council for Postsecondary Education voted to raise the ACT scores it counts as college readiness benchmarks. The rules now say that students need an 18 in English, a 19 in mathematics, and a 20 in reading to be counted as college-ready. Starting with the fall of 2010, if their scores are lower, they can enroll at KCTCS or a public university, but they will have to take a non-credit course or a course with added academic support during their first year to catch up in the weak subject.

Today, the Courier-Journal reports on how institutions are scrambling to get ready for those requirements. Some highlights:
  • "The new regulation will increase the number of first-time college students needing remedial math by 7 percent; and remedial reading by 10 percent, said Sue Cain, the college readiness and developmental education initiative coordinator for the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education."
  • "The state's community colleges might feel the biggest impact, with officials there estimating between 17,400 and 20,000 new students will need to take remedial courses"
  • "Officials at the state's two research institutions — the University of Louisville and the University of Kentucky — say they likely will not see a large increase in students needing developmental education, in part because they have selective admissions. The average ACT score for incoming freshmen at UK this fall was 24.7, and 24.5 at UofL."
  • "Lana Jennings, director of Murray State University's developmental education program, Murray State University Community College, said students often are initially shocked to learn they need to take remedial classes."
One thing I'd add to the article is that no 2009 or 2010 Kentucky public high school graduate should be surprised by these requirements. In 2008, we began requiring every junior to take the ACT and every public high school to provide added support to every student who scored below those benchmarks. If those changes are working, every graduate this year and in future years will at least have clear information on those rules well in advance of starting college.

This is my town!

The Advocate-Messenger reports:
The brutal fact about education today is that even though Danville and Boyle County schools are doing a good job, there is a challenge ahead for teachers and administrators, and room for improvement.

Danville and Boyle County superintendents Carmen Coleman and Mike LaFavers want to get the dialogue started.

Technology, jobs and resources were among the topics discussed at a community forum Tuesday night at Inter-County Energy with the superintendents. Preparing children for the future is an ever-growing challenge as teachers work to teach students skills needed for jobs that don’t exist and technology that hasn’t been invented yet.

I was there. It was great. I couldn't be more excited about where we're headed.

Which $20 million would you cut?

Yesterday’s post worked on big picture on the cuts the Commissioner has been asked to propose. Now let’s look at some of the detail.

Here’s the 2010 enacted budget amount for each line-item Commissioner Holiday has listed as possible targets for reduction:

  • $100,000 for the Appalachian Tutoring Program
  • $200,000 for statewide teacher recruitment
  • $250,000 for the Georgia Chaffee Teenage Parent Program
  • $381,500 for the Leadership and Mentoring Fund
  • $387,500 for the Middle School Academic Achievement Center
  • $430,000 for the Partnership for Student Success
  • $484,400 for the Elementary Grade Arts & Humanities Initiative
  • $500,000 for the Every1Reads program in Jefferson County
  • $500,000 for the Save the Children rural literacy effort
  • $610,300 for the state writing program
  • $616,500 for the costs of transporting students to the School for the Blind and School for the Deaf and then home again
  • $720,900 for dropout prevention
  • $994,700 for teachers' professional growth grants
  • $1,400,000 for the Collaborative Center for Literacy Development
  • $1,507,900 for the Commonwealth School Improvement Fund, which gives weakest schools grants to implement their plans to raise student performance
  • $1,600,000 for teaching academies
  • $1,686,700 for educator quality and diversity grants
  • $2,100,000 for community education
  • $2,500,000 for education technology in coal counties
  • $6,900,000 for math achievement and the Center for Mathematics
  • $7,121,500 for gifted and talented services
  • $10,972,100 for services to children who have been placed in the care of state agency
  • $11,757,600 for locally operated vocational schools
  • $15,300,000 for the Kentucky Education Network
  • $19,500,000 for Kentucky Education Technology System grants to school districts
  • $22,558,100 for incentive grants for schools to implement early reading intervention programs
  • $26,824,800 for the Department of Education’s personnel and operation costs
  • $57,145,000 for family resource and youth service centers
  • $75,127,000 for preschool

I can't find any easy choices on that list!

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

P-12 cuts pending? [UPDATED]

[UPDATE: I replaced the graphs in this post because the originals did not include KDE operating costs in the dollar amounts that are subject to the potential cuts.]

Commissioner Holliday notified superintendents Monday that he has been asked to plan for cuts of up to $20 million to P-12 education. His e-mail is here, and the Herald-Leader reporting here. In this post, I'd like to add a sense of scale to some of the Commissioner's specifics.

First, he says that "this budget reduction planning effort does not apply to SEEK, local school district health insurance or local district life insurance." Those three items are a huge part of the total, roughly like this:
The immune programs were decided by the Governor. However, it's worth noting that the Commissioner is not considering cuts to all the remaining program. He says he is not considering "flexible focus funds" and his list of possible cuts does indeed leave out extended school services, professional development, and safe schools. Beyond that, his list leaves out highly skilled educators, the School for the Blind, the School for the Deaf, state testing, the state share of school lunch costs, and the state share of Infinite Campus costs. Here's an idea of how that further reduces the possible cuts:
Source details for those who love them: This analysis started with the spending figures that the Department presented to the Kentucky Board of Education in October, using the column for the "enacted 2010 budget." Enacted means the amounts approved by the General Assembly, leaving out any cuts that have since been ordered. From that list, I eliminated one line item: the $21,700,100 originally budgeted for textbooks has already been nearly wiped out by earlier cuts. That's a sandlot method that makes the remaining amounts are a better representation of funding still vulnerable to the axe.

Monday, November 30, 2009

Rose on display

EdJurist has fresh video of Deb Dawahare and Ray Corns sharing the story of Rose v. Council for Better Education. Really great listening (and hat tip to KSN&C)!

RTTT will not go to all states

The final RTTT rules came with non-binding guidance on the budget amounts states should apply for. The guidance has separate amounts for five groups of states sorted by size. Category 1 has the largest states, Category 5 has the smallest states and the District of Columbia, Category 4 includes Kentucky, and here are the recommended dollar amounts:

Multiplying each low and high dollar figure by the number of states eligible for those amounts yields these results:

We already know the total grants will be $4,000 million: the original $4,350 minus the $350 that will be in the separate competition for new assessments.

As a result, we know that the feds are signaling, firmly, that they expect quite a few states will not be winners and grant recipients in the upcoming competition.

Charter facilities trouble (in New York)

As anyone in a district with rapid growth can tell you, costs are very different in places that need to add facilities. You're not looking at adding $8,000 or $9,000 in costs to handle each added pupil. Instead, you're figuring out how to borrow and pay back a cost likely to be well north of $10,000,000.

Charter schools have similar facilities struggles, first in finding initial space that meets their learning and safety requirements, and then in adding space if they are met with growing desire to enroll. The New York Times offers one version of how painful those growing pains can be:
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has made charter schools one of his third-term priorities, and that means that in New York, battles and resentment over space — already a way of life — will become even more common. He and his schools chancellor,Joel I. Klein, have allowed nearly two-thirds of the city’s 99 charter schools to move into public school buildings, officials expect two dozen charter schools to open next fall, and the mayor has said he will push the Legislature to allow him to add 100 more in the next four years.
In Harlem, parents have chafed and picketed against an expanding charter school network, the Harlem Success Academy, which is housed in several public schools. In Brownsville, Brooklyn, a plan to close a failing elementary school and let a charter take over the building was shelved after a lawsuit. At P.S. 15, teachers and parents were furious about plans for PAVE to expand next year, after having been told the school would be gone by the end of this academic year. Several hundred parents filled a middle school auditorium in Marine Park, Brooklyn, in the spring to rail against a proposal to house the new Hebrew Language Academy there. The school eventually found a home in a yeshiva.

David Brooks and how we learn

The C-J is running a David Brooks column about our "other education":
We don't usually think of this second education. For reasons having to do with the peculiarities of our civilization, we pay a great deal of attention to our scholastic educations, which are formal and supervised, and we devote much less public thought to our emotional educations, which are unsupervised and haphazard. This is odd, since our emotional educations are much more important to our long-term happiness and the quality of our lives.

In any case, over the next few decades Springsteen would become one of the professors in my second education. In album after album he assigned a new course in my emotional curriculum.

This second education doesn't work the way the scholastic education works. In a normal schoolroom, information walks through the front door and announces itself by light of day. It's direct. The teacher describes the material to be covered, and then everybody works through it.

The knowledge transmitted in an emotional education, on the other hand, comes indirectly, seeping through the cracks of the windowpanes, from under the floorboards and through the vents. It's generally a byproduct of the search for pleasure, and the learning is indirect and unconscious.
That may be how Mr. Brooks does it. For myself, it's been three decades since I engaged a scholarly book without weighing it against the Boss's deeper wisdom.

When I wrestled with Harvard's John Rawls and his political philosophy built entirely around individual choice, my objections rooted in family and community found their best voice in song:
I come from down in the valley, where mister when you're young
They bring you up to do like your daddy done.
Everything I read about Thomas Friedman's take on the global economy gets filtered through the losses that that flat world brings with it:
From the Monongaleh valley
To the Mesabi iron range
To the coal mines of Appalacchia
The story's always the same
Seven-hundred tons of metal a day
Now sir you tell me the world's changed
Once I made you rich enough
Rich enough to forget my name
Every new set of numbers on the current recession echoes for me off the early Reagan economy:
I had a job, I had a girl
I had something going mister in this world
I got laid off down at the lumber yard
Our love went bad, times got hard
Now I work down at the carwash
Where all it ever does is rain
Don't you feel like you're a rider on a downbound train
Whether I'm reading about learning styles or brain research or teaching that closes achievement gaps, I measure excellent teaching by whether it could stand its ground against this:
We busted out of class, had to get away from those fools
We learned more from a three-minute record, baby
Than we ever learned in school.
Most of all, my standard of engagement--my understanding of work worth doing and the energy it deserves--was learned from a single mighty scholar of life well lived:
You hear the voices telling you not to go,
They made their choices and they'll never know,
What it means to steal, to cheat, to lie,
What it's like to live and die
Prove it all night, prove it all night girl and call the bluff,
prove it all night, prove it all night and girl,
I prove it all night for your love.

The cards I've drawn's a rough hand darlin'
I straighten my back and I'm working on a dream
I'm working on a dream

Tramps like us, baby we were born to run.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Teacher recruitment boom (in England)

The BBC reports that England's teacher recruitment effort met all its targets this year for the first time, including being 8 percent above their math target and 9 percent above their science target. Graham Holley, head of the Training and Development Authority for Schools, explained the results this way:

"The recession has, of course, played a part in these excellent results.

"But we have been able to capitalise on the upsurge in interest in teaching only because of all the work we undertook beforehand and the swift targeted interventions that we made in London and throughout the country."

Most interesting to me is the basic fact that the English have a nationwide recruiting process in the first place, an idea Kentucky may want to explore.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

RTTT: more on evaluations

In Race to the Top applications, states can earn a maximum of 500 points. As I blogged earlier, that includes 58 points for work to "improving teacher and principal effectiveness based on performance." Here's a closer look at that part of the application.

First, 5 points will be awarded based on state plans to ensure that districts “establish clear approaches to measuring student growth … and measure it for each individual student.”

Another 15 points will rest on state plans to ensure that districts set up teacher and principal evaluation systems that “differentiate effectiveness using multiple rating categories that take into account data on student growth … as a significant factor” and “are designed and developed with teacher and principal involvement.”

An additional 10 points are available for state plans to ensure that districts “conduct annual evaluations of teachers and principals that include timely and constructive feedback; as part of such evaluations, provide teachers and principals with data on student growth for their students, classes, and schools”

Finally, 28 points are offered for state plans to ensure that districts use those evaluations to make decisions on:

  • Development work to strengthen teachers and principals.
  • Compensation, promotion and retention.
  • Tenure.
  • Removal of “ineffective tenured and untenured teachers and principals after they have had ample opportunities to improve.

In the final and official application, it's worth noting the focus on districts. The earlier draft priorities called for states to do the work on this issue. The final priorities specify instead that participating districts are to do the main work, with the state being responsible for ensuring that they do it well. That means the federal department now accepts and expects a continuation of each district doing these things a bit differently from its neighbors.


That said, the push will be on to have all districts use evaluations that go beyond pass/fail or satisfactory/unsatisfactory basics. They will each need to define a "ladder" of increasing effectiveness. The evaluation process should then identify where each person's work stands on that ladder, and those identifications should guide both professional growth activities and district decisions about individual careers.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Disability gaps (eighth grade this time)

Matching my earlier post on fourth grade results, here's how Kentucky's most recent NAEP performance stacks up when results for students with and without disabilities are shown separately:


Once again, Kentucky's gaps are major grounds for concern, with our weaknesses either in line with the nation or somewhate smaller than the national average.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Standards and achievement

Karin Chenoweth argues in her new book that American education has been organized around teachers deciding in isolation what students need to know. As a result, too many students arrive at college unready to succeed, and students who are "pegged by their schools as non-college bound" get even worse preparation:
These are the classrooms that have inspired the teacher-as-hero body of work such as Blackboard Jungle; Up the Down Staircase; To Sir, With Love; and Stand and Deliver.... The important point to note about all of them is that their plots turn on the fact that if individual teachers hadn't been willing to buck the prevailing institutional culture to hold their non-college-bound students to high standards, their students wouldn't have been expected to do more than log what is known in the education world as "seat time."
Since the 1980s, the education standards movement has tried to change that, pushing states to define what all students should know and be able to do and institute assessments that check whether the standards are being met.

In How It's Being Done, however, Chenoweth argues that some standards are more effective than others. To change classroom practice, standards must be high, clear, and short. Longer, vaguer documents mean that teachers still have to pick and choose which fractions of the total will get classroom priority. Massachusetts has become a national leader in student performance in part by providing standards brief enough to be a firm guide to instruction.

Chenoweth also argues that standards alone are not enough. School practice has to change to use formative assessments, analyze data, and plan effective instruction. All of her success stories involve educators figuring out how to do that work collaboratively, with school leadership playing a pivotal role in keeping that collaboration going long enough to produce major student growth.

In that analysis, I see two factors that are important to understanding Kentucky's experience since 1990. Though we have some important growth in student achievement, we don't have the scale of growth we expected, wanted, and needed from those years of effort.

First, our standards have been too long and too loose, making it unnecessarily hard for our teachers to organize standards-driven work. Senate Bill 1 and the new Common Core standards movement gives us a fresh start on that issue.

Second, we thought that if the state set standards and consequences, schools and districts would quickly figure out how to make effective changes. Some did figure that out, but too many held on to old approaches or implemented quick-fix changes too weak to create the needed student growth. What we missed was the need for direct statewide attention to teaching quality issues. We must take care not to miss that need again.

As we implement Senate Bill 1 and pursue Race for the Top, strong standards and assessments must be backed up by strong work to to build consistent teaching quality in all our schools.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Time to deliver

Penney Sanders argues for strong, quick action to change or close failing schools.

An early feast: How it's being done


I devoted today to two things: first preparation for our family's turkey meal and a wonderful book.

How It's Being Done: Urgent Lessons from Unexpected Schools
is a new exploration of the key practices of high poverty, high performance schools. With warm, credible stories, Karin Chenoweth builds her way to an explanation of what lets those schools generate success for students often expected to fail.

In the conclusion, Chenoweth shares a core answer from Molly Bensinger-Lacy, principal at Graham Road Elementary, who said:
The strategies for educating students to high standards are pretty much the same for all kids:
  • Teacher collaboration;
  • A laser-like focus on what we want kids to learn;
  • Formative assessment to see if they learned it;
  • Data-driven instruction;
  • Personal relationship-building
Chenoweth adds two further thoughts to that:
  • "It is important to note that the underlying assumption under Bensinger-Lacy's list is that there is an outside, third-party assessment for schools -in her case, a state testing system- that holds schools accountable for what their students learn."
  • "There is something else that she didn't mention...and that is leadership."
I'm struck by how, in the Chenoweth version, key ideas turn out to have manageable parts. Thus, the balanced assessment approach is there, but understood in three elements: focus on standards, formative assessement, and then (later) the outside assessment. Similarly, the professional learning community concept is found in collaboration, relationships, and leadership.

Kentucky's different (on race)

Here's what public school enrollment looks like, by race, in the United States as a whole and in our own commonwealth. It's a clear sign that Kentucky is experiencing only a small portion of a huge shift being felt across the country.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Enrollment, staff, and (possibly) teaching quality

In the fall of 2006, Kentucky enrolled 1.39 percent of all students enrolled in public schools nationwide in pre-kindergarten through grade 12.

Our share of public school staff was or below that 1.39 percent level in three categories, with Kentucky having:
  • 0.92 percent of student support staff nationwide
  • 1.36 percent of teachers
  • 1.39 percent of guidance counselors
Our share of public school staff was above the nationwide level in the other categories, including:
  • 1.40 percent of district administrative support staff nationwide
  • 1.43 percent of district instruction coordinators
  • 1.55 percent of district officials and administrators
  • 1.93 percent of principals and assistant principals
  • 1.98 percent of school and library support staff
  • 2.01 percent of instructional aides
  • 2.05 percent of librarians
  • 2.08 percent of other support services staff
If instead, Kentucky schools and districts had consistently had 1.39 percent of each kind of staff, we would have had:
  • 1,190 additional student support staff
  • 702 additional teachers
  • The same number of guidance counselors
  • 23 fewer district administrative support staff
  • 29 fewer district instruction coordinators
  • 97 fewer district officials and administrators
  • 836 fewer school principals and assistant principals
  • 1,745 fewer school and library support staff
  • 4,437 fewer instructional aides
  • 360 fewer librarians
  • 7,758 fewer other support services staff
  • 13,393 fewer total staff
Back in March, I posted a similar analysis using Fall 2005 data. As I wrote then:
I’m not arguing that Kentucky should staff schools to those averages. There may be important benefits to what we do differently, and our students may have different needs. I do think, though, that this is an interesting mirror to look in, inviting us to think about how we currently staff public education.
Today, I’ll add another thought. To build teaching quality, we should want every teacher involved in professional learning community work as part of every work week. Could we change these numbers, either adding teachers or lengthening teachers’ work days, to make that collaborative time easier to find?

(Source note: the data for this analysis comes from the Digest of Education Statistics 2008, using tables 34 and 81. The staff analysis is based on full-time equivalents.)

Thursday, November 19, 2009

What should Kentucky ask for?

Placing teaching quality at the center can give Kentucky’s Race to the Top application a unified vision that stands out against other applications and a compelling explanation of how a grant of limited duration can build strength that will last for decades into the future.
Building on Rick Stiggins' conception of balanced assessment, I believe that our specific aim should be to ensure that every teacher is fully equipped and experienced in these key capacities:
  1. Converting state standards into scaffoldings of more specific skills.
  2. Tracking student progress on those skills though locally-designed assessments.
  3. Analyzing student needs with rich and accessible state longitudinal data.
  4. Developing instruction in collaborative learning communities built around the standards, scaffoldings, assessments, and data analysis noted above.
  5. Refining that instruction by tapping into outside resources: networks of practitioners, expertise from universities and other sources, online access to assessment and instruction resources tied to each standard, and additional study in university classes, teacher academies, and other settings as needed.
Kentucky is deeply ready for those initiatives, as shown by the recent locally-driven efforts to apply balanced assessment concepts, the growing clarity about the kind of professional activity that generates changed practice, and the strong bi-partisan commitments of Senate Bill 1.
Kentucky approaches to the other RTTT priorities --including state standards and assessment, data systems, and intensive intervention in weak schools-- should be built around the central process of strengthening our education workforce to provide consistent, effective teaching for all Kentucky students.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Disability gaps in perspective (fourth grade version)

Two quick thoughts on the math results shown above.

First, Kentucky must deliver much more for our students with disabilities.
Second, Kentucky is already doing a better job than the nation overall.

As shown below, the same two thoughts apply to our reading results from two years ago and our science results from two years before that. (I hope it's clear which of the two thoughts I think is the more important one.)
All scores taken from the NAEP Data Explorer.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Where the RTTT points are

Each state's Race to the Top application will be scored against a maximum of 500 possible points. Here's a quick visual of how those points are divided up:


Below is a more specific list of the elements to be considered in each category, and the points available for each element. Do note that the application form (available here) shows charters, state funding, and other reforms as parts of the "general" section: I showed them separately in the pie chart because the charter issue has received so much discussion.

Great teachers and leaders
  • 21 for providing high-quality pathways for aspiring teachers and principals
  • 58 for improving teacher and principal effectiveness based on performance
  • 25 for ensuring equitable distribution of effective teachers and principals
  • 14 for improving the effectiveness of teacher and principal preparation programs
  • 20 for providing effective support to teachers and principals
State success factors
  • 65 for a state’s education reform agenda and districts’ participation in it
  • 30 for statewide capacity to implement, scale, up, and sustain proposed plans
  • 30 progress in raising achievement and closing gaps
Standards and Assessments
  • 40 for developing and adopting common standards
  • 10 for developing and implementing common, high-quality assessments
  • 20 for supporting the transition to enhanced standards and high-quality assessments
Turning around the lowest achieving schools
  • 10 for intervening in the lowest achieving schools and districts
  • 40 for turning around the lowest achieving schools
Data systems to support instruction
  • 24 for fully implementing a statewide longitudinal data system
  • 5 for accessing and using state data
  • 18 for using data to improve instruction
General
  • 10 for making educational funding a priority
  • 40 for successful conditions for high performing charter schools and other innovative schools
  • 5 for other significant reform conditions
Emphasis on STEM
  • 15 for emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics efforts

RTTT, teacher distribution, and Kentucky pride

Nationwide, we have a deep problem with poor and minority students being the most likely to end up with weak teachers.

There's an obvious starting reason for that. Nationwide, EdTrust reports that, on average:
  • High-poverty districts have $773 less to spend per pupil than low-poverty districts.
  • High-minority districts have $1,122 less per pupil than low-minority districts.
Kentucky, however, doesn't do it that way. Here, on average:
  • High-poverty districts have $906 more per pupil.
  • High minority districts have an average of $234 more per pupil.
The Race to the Top application asks what our state is doing to ensure equitable distribution of effective teachers and principals to schools where many students come from low-income homes or minority backgrounds.

I respectfully submit that our answer should begin with a proud description of our statewide commitment to the equitable funding that is an obvious precondition for any sort of equitable staffing. We should describe the SEEK formula, its impact across the state, our long history of increasing the guarantee every year until this one, and the tremendous commitment involved in maintaining the guarantee even in this most difficult budget year in decades.

It's not enough to solve the teaching quality challenges, but Kentucky's school funding method is more than most states even dream of doing.

$60 to $175 million from RTTT


The federal Education Department suggests that Kentucky's Race to the Top application include a budget of $60 to $175 million total. That is a non-binding amount, and Kentucky could apply for a larger figure, but it is definitely helpful to have a ballpark idea.

Some further ways to break down those amounts:
  • Kentucky could receive $12 to $35 million per year, with the rules calling for the total grant to be spread out over the current fiscal year and the next four.
  • Districts could receive $6 to $17.5 million a year for districts, because the rules specify that half of each state's grant must be distributed that way--and the same for state-level efforts.
  • Per student, districts could receive $10 to $29 per year on average, with the caveat that the Title 1 formula driven by disadvantaged enrollment will actually be used.
One way to think about the size of these amounts is to compare them to figures from the state budget before the great recession swept in. For FY 2008, the state provided:
  • $7 million for gifted and talented services.
  • $10 million for school safety grants.
  • $15 million for professional development.
  • $32 million for extended school services.
Another way to think about the money is that our P-12 education system currently runs on about $6 billion a year in local, state, and federal dollars. Even the high end of the suggested RTTT range will add just six-tenths of one percent to that total.

That suggests that good design and good implementation are absolutely essential if the funding is to bring potent and lasting new strength to our schools.

Update: The $60 to $175 million figure is from a "Race to the Top Budget Guidance" summary shared by EdWeek's Politics K-12 blog, here.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Education attainment


Combining diplomas and GEDs, Kentucky is close to national average in high school completion by our youngest adults, but further behind in bachelors' degrees. The results shown come from Census Bureau files showing the average of results from its three most recent annual American Community Surveys.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

JCPS reading plans, history

Monday night, the Jefferson County school board heard important district plans to raise reading performance. As reported by Chris Kenning in the Courier-Journal:
Changes currently, or soon to be, under way include having students more deeply analyze readings through discussion and writing; improving vocabulary instruction; adding teacher training; and restoring schools' focus on reading, which has been diluted by competing initiatives in math and science.
The district also will increase interventions for struggling students by requiring teachers to track their progress and change strategies if they're not working.
“The way instruction is being delivered now, it's at a superficial level,” the school district's literacy director, Lue Peabody, said in an interview, noting the changes are among a handful of recommendations provided by a panel of experts who reviewed the school district's practices last year.
Ms. Peabody's words are frank about current difficulties, and that's the essential foundation for building better future results.

In the same spirit, it's important to note a weakness at the end of the article:
Board member Linda Duncan said, “Our proficiency isn't where it needs to be, ” but praised the district for gains in reducing novice learners and for the changes they'd undertaken.
Jefferson County has not reduced novice readers. At the elementary level, novice reading performance increased from 2007 to 2008 and increased again from 2008 to 2009. At the middle school level, the same thing happened. At the high school level, novice reading did decline from 2008 to 2009, but the 2009 level is still higher than in 2007.
The numbers shown above come straight from the district's official Interim Performance Report from the Kentucky Department of Education, and more exactly from the reading trend pages available here.

(Yes, the district's Performance Reports for 2006 and early years showed a higher level of novice performance, but those results are not comparable. The Kentucky Core Content Test assessed different content from 1999 to 2006. It also used a different combination of testing items, was scored on a different scale, and had different cut points for separating novice and apprentice performance than the 2007-2008-2009 assessment. The word "novice" is the same, but the word is the only thing that can be validly compared.)

Monday, November 9, 2009

Chamber grades the states


The United States Chamber of Commerce has released a "report card" for all fifty states, including these "grades" for Kentucky:
  • C in school management (includes standards, accountability, and charters, but not assessment)
  • C in finance
  • C in staff hiring and evaluation
  • F in removing ineffective teachers
  • B on data
  • B on pipeline to postsecondary
  • B on technology
Our best result is on the pipeline to postsecondary, where we show strength on requiring a college-ready curriculum, giving statewide college readiness tests, and diplomas with career readiness specialization options.

Our weakest, on removing ineffective teachers, comes from an NCES survey that asked principals which factors they saw as barriers to removing teachers. Kentucky principals were less likely to say that particular things were not barriers than their peers nationwide, as shown in the table below:

The Chamber's report focuses outside the classroom, perhaps expecting that indirect efforts are the best levers to change the direct process of how teachers work with students.

The McKinsey report's conclusion on top school systems across the globe, confirmed by Kentucky's reform experience, convinces me otherwise: the quality of teaching must be addressed directly. For that, the crucial issues are things like teacher preparation, teacher internships, professional development and collaboration, leadership development, leadership practice, intervention when individual students perform weakly (including formative use of assessment results), and intervention when whole schools perform weakly. The Chamber's effort is impressive and the specifics interesting, but the end result is not on the most important track for raising student performance.

As Michael Barber told the Prichard Committee in June, "the only way to improve outcomes is to improve instruction."

Sunday, November 8, 2009

The uncertain C-J

Of particular concern to Kentucky is to ensure that educational progress is experienced throughout the state. The overall improvements that served to move Kentucky up in the rankings were not felt by all areas, or all schools, and the task force should work to see that all boats are lifted in the suggestions it makes.
That's from the Courier-Journal's Sunday editorial about the Governor's new education task force.

The editorial speaks part of the truth:"not all areas" have felt the overall improvement.

The editorial omits a central feature of that truth: The C-J's home turf is by far the largest of the "areas" that have not participated fully in the transformation all our schools need. In Jefferson County, the school system now ranks in the bottom fifth of districts statewide.

And the editorial leaves out another, closely-related truth: Jefferson County has financial, educational, and cultural wealth most Kentucky districts can barely imagine. Its schools ought to be the envy of the state. Excellence is entirely within their reach, but only with leadership that speaks frankly about current weak performance and boldly about the need for much higher achievement in the coming years. It is past time for that sort of leadership to arise and be heard in our largest school district.

"For if the trumpet makes an uncertain sound, who will prepare for battle?"

Friday, November 6, 2009

"Tidal wave of reform" at Prichard meeting (press release)

The press release for the Prichard Committee's November 2nd meeting is headlined 'Tidal wave of reform' focus of recent Prichard Committee meeting, and reports on the event as follows.

FRANKFORT, Ky. - An in-depth look at what Kentucky's new education commissioner has called "a tidal wave of reform" was the focus of the recent fall meeting of the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence.
The words of Education Commissioner Dr. Terry Holliday describe several key developments that are expected to have a significant impact on the way Kentucky prepares its children to succeed as adults. The developments coincide with the recent arrival in Kentucky of two new education leaders: Holliday at the Kentucky Department of Education and Dr. Robert King, president of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education.
King and Holliday emphasized to the committee (during its November 2, 2009, meeting in Frankfort) that they are working collaboratively to accelerate the improvement of Kentucky's schools in response to state and federal initiatives.
Robert F. Sexton, the committee's executive director, pointed out that such collaboration is both noteworthy and unprecedented. "This is the first time we've had both the commissioner of education and the president of the postsecondary education council address the committee at the same time," he said.
The committee's specific areas of interest included a groundbreaking piece of legislation enacted by the 2009 General Assembly, Senate Bill 1, and a federal funding initiative known as Race to the Top. Here is a closer look, based on presentations to the committee from Holliday, King, Rhonda Sims, director of the division of assessment support for the state Department of Education and David Cook, the department's project manager for Race to the Top:
  • Some $4.25 billion is available nationally under the Race to the Top program but how much any individual state, such as Kentucky, could receive will depend on how many grants the federal government awards.
  • Kentucky will need new strategies to improve badly failing schools to improve its prospects for receiving the federal funds.
  • In addition to turning around low-performing schools, the federal criteria emphasize how states assure quality teaching, use data systems to measure student progress and develop and use rigorous standards and tests. Senate Bill 1 has improved Kentucky's position due to its mandate for new standards, testing and other requirements.
  • The final federal guidelines are expected soon, and they could include a requirement that states allow the creation of charter-like schools. This would require legislation in Kentucky, which does not have a law on the books allowing charter schools, but state education officials are not considering a comprehensive charter-school program.
  • Although state testing will continue while a new assessment system is developed under Senate Bill 1 for implementation in 2012, schools' scores on the state test will not be part of a state accountability system during the interim.
  • Schools will continue to be held accountable for students' scores on the national No Child Left Behind test.
  • A national effort to develop new standards for math and language arts - known as "common core" standards - could also lead to the creation of common assessments. Kentucky is part of this national effort.
  • The Council on Postsecondary Education will soon develop a new strategic plan that is expected to include such elements as enhanced postsecondary support for elementary and secondary education; renewed focus on associate degrees in the community and technical college system; a greater emphasis on regional universities' areas of excellence; and more attention on research and graduate study at the state's research universities.
The committee also welcomed several new members:
  • Alva Clark of Lexington, an attorney, parent and fellow of the Commonwealth Institute for Parent Leadership
  • Louisville attorneys Matt Breetz and Franklin Jelsma
  • Al Cornish, vice president of education and development for Norton Healthcare in Louisville
  • Paula Fryland, executive vice president for corporate banking of PNC Bank, Louisville
  • Roger Marcum of Lebanon, executive vice president of St. Catharine College and former superintendent of Marion County Public Schools.
###

Long thinking about state and local reform

Together, the chapters in this volume suggest that student success is only possible in an educational environment that responds to and nourishes each child's individual curiosity, personal learning style, past experience, and cultural heritage. That environment, it is argued, is one where educators are highly flexible, free to adapt curriculum and instructional practices to particular pupils and situations, and able to inquire and deliberate systematically and regularly about how they might be yet more responsive to their students. That sort of environment can only be created by those who work within it: the staff, the students, the parents, and any actively involved citizens who voluntarily make the school part of their lives.

If that argument is correct, a good school requires a kind of yeast to rise, and people outside the school, including state officials, cannot supply that ingredient. That does not mean, however, that they cannot contribute, because inert resources like facilities and supplies remain important, and because inappropriate regulation, like too much salt in the bread dough, can cause the yeast to die. If state officials think carefully about what must be allowed to happen at each school, they can select those roles that make it possible for parents, teachers, and students to play effectively their distinctive roles in effective education.
The bread-baking metaphor should have mentioned that some warm accountability will also speed the yeasty work. Other than that, the analysis still seems sound to me sixteen years later. It's my own conclusion to an essay called "Beyond Micromanagement, Beyond Deregulation: the State Role in Effective Education Reform," published in Investing in U.S. Schools.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

FAQ: What's a charter school?

Charter schools are publicly funded elementary or secondary schools that have been freed from some of the rules, regulations, and statutes that apply to other public schools, in exchange for some type of accountability for producing certain results, which are set forth in each charter school's charter.
That efficient definition, offered by the National Education Association, captures three of four key charter elements: public funding, flexibility, and accountability. An additional common expectation is that parents apply to have their children attend a charter school.

Kentucky currently does not have a charter school law. States that do have charter school laws may have an advantage in applying for federal Race to the Top funds, and creating a charter school statute may be part of the Department of Education legislative agenda in the coming session, as noted in this Herald-Leader report.

For a deeper sense of how charter schools operate, here's the definition proposed in the "New Model Law" recommended by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools:
A ‘public charter school’ means a public school that:
  • Has autonomy over decisions including, but not limited to, matters concerning finance, personnel, scheduling, curriculum and instruction;
  • Is governed by an independent governing board;
  • Is established, operating, and accountable under the terms of a charter contract between the school’s board and its authorizer;
  • Is a school to which parents choose to send their children;
  • Is a school that admits students on the basis of a lottery if more students apply for admission than can be accommodated;
  • Provides a program of education that includes one or more of the following: pre-school, pre-kindergarten, any grade or grades from kindergarten through 12th grade, and adult community, continuing, and vocational education programs;
  • Operates in pursuit of a specific set of educational objectives as defined in its charter contract; and
  • Operates under the oversight of its authorizer in accordance with its charter contract.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

In-state enrollment resumes (slow) growth

From 2003 to 2006, undergraduate study by Kentucky residents stopped growing, at least at public institutions. For 2007 and 2008, growth resumed, though at a much slower pace than we saw before 2003. Here's a snapshot of the overall numbers:

Of the roughly 2,700 additional in-state FTEs from 2006 to 2008, more 2,000 enrolled in the Kentucky Community and Technical College System.

In the same two year period, the four-year universities added just under 700 in-state FTEs.

These numbers provide an important update to State Auditor Crit Luallen's 2007 warning that in-state enrollment may be endangered by rising tuition. The disturbing enrollment trend she noted has improved at least slightly, though not enough to put Kentucky on track to meet our statewide 2020 target of matching national educational attainment.

Data source: "Full-Time Equivalent Enrollment by Residency and Level - Public Institutions - Fall"reports from the Council on Postsecondary Education.