Who is minding the Senate Bill 1 (2009) store?
Since its passage in the 2009 regular legislative session, Kentucky’s Senate Bill 1 (SB-1) has been hailed as one of the most important education advances since the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990.Indeed, if properly implemented, SB-1 could offer great promise for the commonwealth.
But, SB-1 implementation has been quite problematic. Aside from the major controversy now raging about the education standards actually adopted after SB-1’s passage, a new report indicates that extra help students are supposed to get to fully prepare them for college has been largely ignored. Thousands of students who might have avoided costly college remedial classes with a little extra help in high school have not received that help.
It starts to make one wonder if anyone is minding the SB-1 store.
The promise
SB-1 is actually a very impressive piece of legislation. For example, the bill requires a complete set of upgraded education standards to replace Kentucky’s clearly inadequate standards from the CATS era. The new standards are supposed to take all students from Kindergarten to successful entry into postsecondary education and careers. The bill calls for standards created and fully controlled by Kentuckians. SB-1 also requires upgraded assessments to serve all students – including advanced students – and requires more intervention for students when test results show they lack things needed to be college and career ready.
Unfortunately, five years after SB-1’s enactment, some very clear problems are emerging regarding the actual implementation of SB-1.
The standards problem
One major controversy involves the education standards actually adopted after SB-1’s enactment. The “Kentucky Core Academic Standards,” as they are called, are based entirely on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English language arts and math and on the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) for science. Some of the resulting contentious problems include:• Neither Common Core nor NextGen Science was created in Kentucky.• Control of CCSS and NGSS remains firmly in the hands of far-off Washington, DC entities.
• Kentucky’s educators cannot upgrade either CCSS or NGSS as experience here dictates. Our hands are tied by those Washington entities.
• Both Common Core and NextGen Science omit many subjects more advanced students require in the last two years of high school, subjects essential to go on to more competitive colleges and careers.
The limited high school subject coverage in CCSS and NGSS stands in sharp contrast to what SB-1 requires. Nothing in the bill permits omission of higher level high school coursework. In fact, the bill clearly requires needs of “advanced learners” to be met along with those of less advanced students.
Also, SB-1 provides no authority for state education leaders to give away Kentucky’s control over education to either private or public groups in Washington.
A new issue: Failure to provide required assistance
Aside from the standards issue, there are even more SB-1 implementation problems. SB-1 has a requirement for educators to identify students who need more help and then to give those students that help. One way such help is offered is with “Transition Courses” that help high school students better prepare for college.
Sadly, five years after SB-1’s passage, a new report indicates the requirement for such courses is largely being ignored in our school systems. Unfortunately, this report does not come from Kentucky’s educators; it’s from the REL Appalachia research lab. The new report shows SB-1 requirements for transition courses are being largely ignored.
The Kentucky Commissioner of Education’s own blog recently talked about some of the disturbing findings in the new REL Appalachia report.
The REL Appalachia report separately examines support needed by several different groups of students. One group is on track and needs no more assistance. Another group is way behind and would need massive support to get back on track.
A third student group in the study is relatively close, but not fully on track, to be college and career ready without extra remedial help. The report says such students – there were 12,712 of them in the senior class across Kentucky in 2011-12 – score between one to three points below the ACT’s College Readiness Benchmark Scores. These students are almost there, but not quite.
Now, here’s the rub. Summarizing from the report, the Kentucky Commissioner of Education says that statewide only 28.1 percent of the students who were almost-there in math got transition courses. Far more shocking, just eight percent of almost-there students in reading got this extra help.
In other words, among those students who need just a little more help to be on track for college (and, thereby, avoid costly college remedial classes), 71.9 percent don’t get the extra help SB-1 requires in math and an astonishing 92 percent don’t get this legally required help in reading!
Putting a face on this, in the 2011-12 school term almost 11,700 Kentucky high school seniors didn’t get the extra reading help they needed and likely went on to face remedial course costs in postsecondary education. Those costs, and the waste of college time, could have been avoided if SB-1 had been followed.
By the way, when those almost-there students do get help, it really works. Commissioner Holliday also reports:
“Statewide pass rates for students in the approaching benchmarks category who take transition courses are 94.7 percent for math and 96.1 percent for reading.” Those are really encouraging numbers…if our students can just get those needed courses.
Please remember, SB-1 was passed five years ago.
• Why is it that only now is the Commissioner talking about adding tracking elements to the state’s student database system to facilitate an official examination of this problem?
• Why did this significant failure to comply with SB-1 take so long to surface?
• Why is the first indication of trouble coming from an out-of-state, independent research group?
Who is minding Kentucky’s education store?