All Kentucky Comprehensive Support and Improvement Schools are not equal

Kentucky’s new assessment and accountability information was released to the public today, and one area of great interest involves the schools that were identified as lowest performing under the “Comprehensive Support and Improvement” (CSI) category.

The issue to be addressed here is that not all of the new CSI schools are really equal. In fact, a number of the new CSI schools were in trouble under the old Priority Schools system right up to the end of that program and apparently still are doing rock-bottom compared to the rest of the state. I think these Priority-CSI schools need special consideration and attention going forward, but it doesn’t look like the Kentucky Department of Education is on top of this one, so far. Hopefully, that will change.

To learn more about this issue and to see which schools went straight from Priority to CSI status, just click the “Read more” link.

The new briefing packet for the score release says the CSI schools rank among the bottom for performance across several areas including either being in the bottom 5% of Title I or non-Title I schools for test-related performance including both proficiency rates and the rate of growth in those proficiency rates and, if a high school, for having a low Transition Readiness rate or for having a lower than an 80% graduation rate.

The tests used vary by school level but can include reading, math, science, social studies and writing.

The Transition Readiness indicator involves the proportion of new high school graduates who could show readiness under at least one of the criteria outlined in Table 1, which comes from Table 11 in the briefing packet.

Table 1

Transition Readiness Requirements List

In any event, Table 2 shows the listing of the 51 new CSI schools found here with my addition of flags to show which schools previously had Priority School problems. My addition is based on data received from the Kentucky Department of Education from an Open Records request. You can see the results of the response to that Open Records request in this blog.

Table 2 (Corrected)

CSI Schools with Former Priority Status

Note in Table 2 that 11 CSI schools were in the Priority Schools program right up until that program was shut down. Their “Get out of Jail Free” card didn’t last very long. All of these Priority/CSI schools are in Jefferson County, by the way.

Two other schools, the Newport High School and Jefferson County's Waggener High, had been in Priority Status until 2015 but apparently have now slid backwards, again, as well.

Folks at the Kentucky Department of Education and on the state board need to pay attention here.

Also, the individuals who soon will conduct the required management audits in each of these Priority/CSI schools needs to know the schools’ histories, too. Obviously, things were being attempted to improve these schools under the old Priority program, but those efforts don’t seem to have been very effective, or maybe needed still more time to work. The audits will need to delve into all of those questions to have full value, and the quality of audits that never mention the schools’ earlier Priority status will be at least somewhat suspect.

Updated 28 Sep 18 to correct Waggener High Schools Priority School Status in Table 2 and in the text.