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Almost $40 million already cut from SEEK program

SPWeston@gmail.com (Susan Perkins Weston) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:49:00 +0000

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.

Equity litigation and politics (in New Jersey)

SPWeston@gmail.com (Susan Perkins Weston) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 15:26:00 +0000

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).

Common core standards see (small) delay

SPWeston@gmail.com (Susan Perkins Weston) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:40:00 +0000

Flypaper's Amber Winkler reports from a briefing this morning on the status of the Common Core language arts and mathematics standards:

The K-12 back-mapped standards in reading and in math will be released for public comment on January 4th.
“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.

College readiness benchmarks: rubber about to meet road

SPWeston@gmail.com (Susan Perkins Weston) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:30:00 +0000

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!

SPWeston@gmail.com (Susan Perkins Weston) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 05:18:00 +0000

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?

SPWeston@gmail.com (Susan Perkins Weston) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 05:02:00 +0000

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!

P-12 cuts pending? [UPDATED]

SPWeston@gmail.com (Susan Perkins Weston) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 05:13:00 +0000

[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.

Rose on display

SPWeston@gmail.com (Susan Perkins Weston) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 04:39:00 +0000

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

SPWeston@gmail.com (Susan Perkins Weston) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 00:30:00 +0000

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)

SPWeston@gmail.com (Susan Perkins Weston) — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:28:00 +0000

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

SPWeston@gmail.com (Susan Perkins Weston) — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 13:38:00 +0000

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.

Teacher recruitment boom (in England)

SPWeston@gmail.com (Susan Perkins Weston) — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 02:37:00 +0000

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.

RTTT: more on evaluations

SPWeston@gmail.com (Susan Perkins Weston) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 22:53:00 +0000

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.

Disability gaps (eighth grade this time)

SPWeston@gmail.com (Susan Perkins Weston) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 23:18:00 +0000

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.

Standards and achievement

SPWeston@gmail.com (Susan Perkins Weston) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 01:42:00 +0000

Kristin 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 a national nleader 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.

Time to deliver

SPWeston@gmail.com (Susan Perkins Weston) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 03:23:00 +0000

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

An early feast: How it's being done

SPWeston@gmail.com (Susan Perkins Weston) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:18:00 +0000

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)

SPWeston@gmail.com (Susan Perkins Weston) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:20:00 +0000

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.

Enrollment, staff, and (possibly) teaching quality

SPWeston@gmail.com (Susan Perkins Weston) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:51:00 +0000

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.)

What should Kentucky ask for?

SPWeston@gmail.com (Susan Perkins Weston) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:20:00 +0000

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:

Converting state standards into scaffoldings of more specific skills.
Tracking student progress on those skills though locally-designed assessments.
Analyzing student needs with rich and accessible state longitudinal data.
Developing instruction in collaborative learning communities built around the standards, scaffoldings, assessments, and data analysis noted above.
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.

Disability gaps in perspective (fourth grade version)

SPWeston@gmail.com (Susan Perkins Weston) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:50:00 +0000

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.

Where the RTTT points are

SPWeston@gmail.com (Susan Perkins Weston) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 14:26:00 +0000

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

SPWeston@gmail.com (Susan Perkins Weston) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 12:34:00 +0000

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

SPWeston@gmail.com (Susan Perkins Weston) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 11:04:00 +0000

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.

Education attainment

SPWeston@gmail.com (Susan Perkins Weston) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 01:57:00 +0000

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.