Do Gates’ grants lead to better education?

From my earliest days of paying attention to education in Kentucky in 1994, I’ve heard a ton of stories about how this or that education innovation was going to do great things for our kids. For more than 20 years, I have heard far too many poorly researched and documented claims about education reforms that really never worked. Some of those reform ideas have been tried again and again as educators conveniently ignored the past history of failures.

So, I think I can be excused for being a bit cautious about current announcements concerning “new things” schools are trying to do to improve themselves. Too often, the ideas are not new, and they already have a troubled history.

Thus, a recent article in the Springfield Sun (Kentucky) caught my eye a few days ago. In “WCPS shines with grant” the Sun talks about how a grant program from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that started in 2011 is supposedly helping Washington County public school teachers improve through both a literacy design collaborative and a similar collaborative effort in mathematics.

Sadly, such collaborative efforts are a really old story in Kentucky. Collaboration processes were pushed from the early days of the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990, nearly a quarter of a century ago.

For example, the concepts of collaboration and development of group process skills are mentioned in multiple places in an early KERA document called “Transformations: Kentucky's Curriculum Framework, Volume II,” which made its first appearance in 1993 in hard copy. Collaboration is mentioned in this early version of the document in multiple areas such as on Pages 27, 30, 36 and 38. An entire section on "Group Process Training" begins on Page 41.

A somewhat more recent version of Transformations is available online here. This updated version talks about collaboration in multiple places such as Pages 26, 27, 30, 37, 38, and 207. The section on "Group Process Training" remains, also starting on Page 41 though this is a different document.

My point is that there has been a strong push for collaborative efforts in Kentucky’s schools for decades.

So, I have to wonder how Washington County schools missed out on this reform idea up until now. And, even more importantly, I have to wonder if this idea will somehow work out better, this time. Despite what the news report says, there is reason for concern, yet again.

The Springfield Sun article indicates the recent Gates-funded collaboration push “first took root at Washington County Middle School and North Washington Middle School, with hopes of bringing improved analytic reading, researching and writing skills to students” (Note: Kentucky Department of Education Documents identify “North Washington Middle School” as "North Washington Elementary School").

The newspaper also indicates the initial effort in writing only expanded into other middle school subjects in the second year of the program.

Per the article, the two middle schools’ writing-on-demand scores have been increasing in Kentucky’s KPREP testing.

Actually, that isn’t correct for North Washington Elementary School. According to the school’s 2011-12 and 2012-13 School Report Cards (available online here), the two available years of Kentucky Performance Rating for Educational Progress (KPREP) Grade 8 writing scores for this school show a proficiency rate drop for the eighth grade students from 67.3 percent in 2011-12 to only 55.9 percent in 2012-13. Scores did move up in Grade 8 writing in Washington County Middle School, but since the Gates program began, overall writing performance is a mixed bag in Washington County’s middle schools.

Since both math and writing are mentioned in the Sun’s article, I also decided to look at something else besides the new KPREP, which has released only two years of data as of this time.

I checked how the district’s two middle schools’ performed in English and math in the ACT, Inc.’s EXPLORE testing. EXPLORE, which is a useful test of progress towards readiness for college and careers, is administered to all eight grade public school students in Kentucky shortly after the start of each school year. The two graphs below summarize what I found.

Washington Co Middle Schools EXPLORE English Since Gates Grant

In EXPLORE English, the North Washington Elementary School also saw a score drop between 2011-12 and 2012-13, which agrees with the school’s KPREP writing trend for those years. Then the school progressed a bit above state average in 2013-14.

However, the Washington County Middle School saw a very serious two-point score decline in English in 2013-14, dropping the school well below the state average score for EXPLORE English as a result.

Looking at the real data, to date I see a very mixed signal at best regarding Washington County’s performance in the English/writing area. Very simply, we need to see more years of data before accepting the idea that the Gates grants are producing any significant progress in the English language arts area. Also, it is clear that whoever told the Sun the writing scores (which come from KPREP) were improving in the middle schools conveniently overlooked the real story for the eighth graders between 2011-12 and 2012-13 on both KPREP writing and EXPLORE English in North Washington Elementary School.

Now, here is how Washington County’s middle schools did on EXPLORE math over the past few years.

Washington Co Middle Schools EXPLORE Math Since Gates Grant

Both schools saw a decline of about a point in their EXPLORE math scores between 2012-13 and 2013-14.So far, it looks like the Gates-funded math collaborative isn’t working well, at least if your goal is preparing for college and careers.

However, to reiterate, I would like to see a year or two of more data before forming any real judgments about the performance of the new, Gates-funded programs in Washington County. It’s too soon to really form solid evaluations.

My point for now is that I am not the one who claimed progress in these schools based on the limited and equivocal data currently available. Such premature claims are coming from the schools themselves, and the limited data that is available does not lend support to those claims.

Thus, after hearing claims for two decades about similar education ideas that didn’t seem to work out in actual practice, I’ll reserve judgment on whether the “new” Gates program is really working until I see some really compelling data. And, I won’t be taking other people’s words about that data, either.