#kyga22 Update: Charter schools, BIPPS education priorities move forward
Several pieces of legislation containing Bluegrass Institute policy priorities moved closer to becoming law on Tuesday during the 53rd day of the 2022 session of the Kentucky General Assembly.
Teaching reading better so Ky kids can better read to learn
With today’s final passage of Senate Bill 9, Kentucky’s public education system is now poised to take a major step forward in reading instruction. The help is badly needed.
Kentucky’s most recent fourth grade reading proficiency rate on the National Assessment of Educational Progress is a dismal 35% overall, while for the state’s Black students it’s an inexcusably low 14%. Worse, these rates have actually been dropping over the past few years.
Hopefully, if well implemented, SB 9 will change that picture. The bill will make results from scientific research about reading instruction available to teachers throughout the commonwealth. New forms of testing should help spot reading problems sooner, and there are extensive requirements for collaboration, including with parents, and supports for struggling readers, too.
Colleges that prepare teachers will also see badly needed changes. Currently, research from the National Council on Teacher Quality indicates that many Kentucky teacher preparation programs fail to cover notable parts of what reading science shows is necessary to produce strong reading. SB 9 will help remove those deficiencies.
In another important move, the legislature will now receive annual reports specifically on progress in improving reading, as well.
All of this comes shortly after a recent Bluegrass Institute report highlighting schools in Eastern Kentucky that has undertaken programs to improve reading instruction based on scientific research and posted dramatic score improvement as a result.
In Clay County, for example, Goose Rock Elementary School went from a reading proficiency rate of just 23% on KPREP, the state’s test, to an astonishing rate just shy of 90% as of 2019. So, the science works. Hopefully, SB 9 will get that capability into the hands of teachers all across the state.
School council reforms move forward
Other education bills are also moving. Senate Bill 1, which saw some changes during its consideration by the Kentucky House, is now moving to either a conference committee or affirmation of the House changes by the Kentucky Senate. SB 1 in its current form deals with a number of key issues, but the most important one is returning rationality to the governance of Kentucky’s public schools.
For the better part of the past three decades, the real power in schools over key issues like staffing and curriculum selection has been held by School-Based Decision Making (SBDM) councils. The councils are controlled by teachers, who by law always have the majority vote. Parents, while represented, are always a minority and therefore have no control. Also, local citizens have no say with councils even though they pay taxes that support public education.
Worse, under Kentucky law parents and citizens with concerns about curriculum or staffing have no recourse with their elected local school board and that board’s school superintendent. Essentially, democratic control was wrested away from local school boards, and by extension from citizens and parents, by the SBDM law.
SB 1 will finally fix this awkward and often-unsuccessful governance model that continues to produce low performance in key subjects like math and, as previously noted, reading.
Ensuring Kentucky kids learn American principles
SB 1 now also incorporates another bill, SB 138, which is titled the Teaching American Principles Bill. The title does a nice job of what SB 138 does at a time when many citizens and parents recognize that our youth have particularly incomplete and often biased views about the country and how it’s governed.
The SB 138 provisions won’t fix everything, but the bill does require a rational approach to ensuring students get more balance in their coursework, learning about the good as well as the bad in American history.
Charter schools bill escapes House
A final bill with movement is House Bill 9, which finally fulfils a promise in legislation from 2017 that established charter schools in Kentucky but failed to provide a stable funding stream for those schools.
Kentucky is one of less than a handful of states that still don’t have these schools of choice. Given the growing success of charters in places like Atlanta and Cleveland for students of color – a particular area of weakness for Kentucky education – it’s time to offer this school choice option to parents of modest means who want and need an alternative choice for where their children get educated.
HB 9, which survived an 11-9 vote in committee and a 51-46 vote by the full House on Tuesday, establishes two pilot charter schools that will allow all to see how this school model can perform in Kentucky. It’s about time.
This legislative update was compiled by Richard G. Innes, education analyst for the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions. He can be reached at dinnes@freedomkentucky.com.
Government affairs director Sarah May Durand will have complete coverage of the week’s legislative activity on Friday.