NY Times: Education still lags in Kentucky

We grow tired of in-state education cheer leaders constantly bombarding us with exaggerated claims about all the education progress we’ve made in Kentucky. While they may fool a few here at home, they aren’t fooling key folks from other parts of the country.

The cheerleaders don’t even fool all of us Kentuckians.

A case in point: on March 30, 2012, the New York Times ran “Competitors on the Court, but Economic Teammates.”

This article presents pointed comments about education in the commonwealth from UK economics professor Ken Troske, who says Kentucky lags badly in education.

Per the Times, Troske says Kentucky still ranks 47th in terms of share of adults with a college degree.

The Times quotes Troske:

“In education, we’re flat and at the bottom,” he said. “That has to be front and center moving forward, whatever industry we want to attract. We have to have a large majority of our kids getting some kind of post-secondary degree.”

Not only does the Times present Troske’s comments without challenge, but the mayors of both Louisville and Lexington agreed with Troske’s points.

Perhaps the mayors have seeen this Bluegrass Institute graph. It displays Kentucky’s two-decades of fourth and eighth grade performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Clearly, there has been some progress. However, with the most recent proficiency rates still running around only one in three students, and with the reading scores in serious question due to Kentucky’s nation-leading exclusion of students with learning disabilities, educational improvement in Kentucky to date has been far too little and has come far too slowly.

All Subjects - Recent and Oldest NAEP P Rates 2011

So far, informed observations from out of state have not stopped the education cheerleading here at home. On April 10, 2012, the Herald-Leader ran “Spotlight shifts to education; still a negative for state.”

Challenging Troske’s claim that Kentucky’s educational system is “flat and at the bottom,” the Herald-Leader claims, “Fortunately, Kentucky's education picture is more nuanced and buoyant than that.”

But, even the paper’s attempt to ‘nuance’ the situation falls a bit flat. Somewhat mixing apples and oranges, the paper crows:

“From 2000 to 2009, Kentuckians aged 25 to 44 with an associate degree or higher increased from 27.3 percent to 33.7 percent.”

Supposedly, that statistic ranked 36th in the nation.

Then a little later in the article, the paper admits:

“By the 2010 American Community Survey, Kentucky had slipped to 40th in higher education for the 25-to-34 age group.”

While the age groups obviously are not equivalent, the paper does understand that moving from 36th to 40th place would not be progress. In fact, if KERA were making a relative difference in younger adult Kentuckian’s educational levels, the second statistic for 25 – 34 year olds should look better, not worse, than the numbers for the 25 – 44 year olds.

The truth is, whether Kentucky ranks 36th or 40th doesn’t make much difference. Either ranking is too low to help attract significant amounts of high quality business and industry to the state. If this performance is all we have been able to accomplish after more than two decades of budget-straining education reform, clearly that reform has a VERY long way to go. And, people outside Kentucky, where a lot of folks with better educations can understand the math, know it.

It would be better for Kentuckians to stop the cheerleading and buckle down to an understanding that we still badly need some very fundamental, break-the-mold education reforms -- reforms that really work. Here at the Bluegrass Institute, we think that must include much better teacher preparation and continuation training based on solid research (currently in short supply) about what really works in the classroom. It also should include much more extensive employment of digital learning programs so our kids can benefit from master teachers no matter what part of the country those teachers might come from.

And, precisely because research on what works is in short supply, we need charter schools to act as crucibles to really separate the education wheat from the considerable education chaff. That includes focusing more critical attention on special interests that seem more concerned about grabbing more money and power for adults than about doing things that will work better for kids and, ultimately, the overall economy of the Bluegrass State.