As Kentucky’s education leaders debate education reforms again, a thought-provoking article in the Denver Post is worth consideration.

In “If educators don’t buy in, education reform fails” author Dick Hilker points to an obvious history of remarkable resistance within the nation’s education system to making substantial changes. Although there have been massive efforts at education reform across the country in the past quarter of a century, Hilker points out that:

“Overall, there has been little improvement.”

Hilker knows why, adding:

“Alas, the troops — most of the educators — aren’t buying in.”

It’s a very obvious problem in Kentucky. Click the “Read more” link to see how obvious.

Despite 25-plus years of education reform efforts in the Bluegrass State, we still see depressing achievement gaps that seem to be getting worse and a painfully slow rate of progress overall that won’t see a lot of our kids proficient in core subjects like math and reading for many decades yet to come.

Meanwhile, Kentucky is about to sunset its third major education assessment and accountability plan since the enactment of the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990. First to fail was the Kentucky Instructional Results Information System, the KIRIS system, which tottered along from 1992 to 1998. The Commonwealth Accountability Testing System, the CATS, which followed KIRIS, lost credibility by 2009. Presently, we are watching the demise of the Unbridled Learning system that replaced CATS.

Basically, all of these assessment and accountability systems tried to do the same thing – attempting to use tests to force improvements in education. So far, the education community has not responded very well to that approach. Absent Hilker’s buy in, the fourth assessment and accountability iteration, whatever it turns out to be, may prove a no more effective spur to our educators than anything preceding it.

Outside of changing accountability systems, Kentucky’s education establishment seems content to totter along pushing the same ideas for reform that have been with us since the beginning of KERA. New ideas are notably missing.

For example, the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence recently posted a paper titled, “Excellence with Equity: It’s Everybody’s Business.” The paper candidly does admit what we at BIPPS have been saying for years about Kentucky’s students:

“An entire generation of students has come and gone since we began to talk about ‘achievement gaps’ and, yet, the historic divides of poverty, race, heritage and learning differences continue to be fairly accurate predictors of student success or failure.”

In other words, ideas pushed since the beginning of KERA have not worked.

Somehow, however, Prichard’s paper tells us that these ideas are supposedly effective. Really?

We’ve heard talk about equity under the mantra of “All kids can learn” since the very earliest days of KERA. I actually think that is true for most kids, and I don’t doubt Prichard’s belief in that, either.

But, our recent gap performance makes it clear that far too many Kentucky teachers never bought in. With EXPLORE and PLAN achievement gaps continuing to deteriorate since Common Core came along, something isn’t working for teachers and they are not buying in.

There are more examples, some coming right out of the Prichard paper.

Prichard calls for more preschool and has for many years. Since KERA was enacted Kentucky has made preschool available to a large proportion of our disadvantaged kids. But, even Prichard admits that today “Gaps are already visible at the start of kindergarten.” The paper then adds, “Most gaps expand from kindergarten to graduation, confirming that improvement is needed at all grade levels.” That fits exactly with findings from many research efforts into the biggest preschool program of them all – Headstart. Whatever gains Headstart graduates bring to public school are essentially gone by Grade 3. Teachers are not buying in.

Prichard makes a rather amazing admission on Page 9 of the report where an insert box is titled, “Policies to address achievement gaps in place, but impact minimal.” It seems that after 25 plus years of education reform efforts, teachers still are not buying in to those “policies.” Maybe it is time to realize those policies really don’t work.

Prichard’s recommendation 4.11 says:

“Establish a professional credential for school turnaround specialists with proven track records to support rapid improvement in the highest-needs schools.”

That suggestion probably came from one of the report’s more excellent team members, Dr. Dewey Hensley, who won national attention – and ours at BIPPS, too – for his proven record at the J.B. Atkinson Elementary School in Louisville. Later, Hensley became the chief academic officer for the entire Jefferson County School System, but here the story turned sour. Hensley never got the authority he needed to replicate his Atkinson success elsewhere in Louisville and he eventually resigned in disgust. Jefferson County’s educators never bought in.

I could go on with many more examples of problems with the suggestions in the Prichard paper, but I won’t. Suffice to say we’ve been hearing most of the recommendations since the early days of KERA.

About the only education reform that Kentucky has not already tried is the one not mentioned in the Prichard paper – school choice. Only school choice is likely to get around a fact of life that Hilker understands very well: education elites can come up with all the plans they want, but our existing education staff have already demonstrated they are not buying in. Getting around that problem will require motivation factors that the Prichard paper simply never addresses – how do we motivate those who either don’t want to or can’t improve on their own? Could the introduction of some competitive forces via school choice provide that currently missing answer? At the very least, wouldn’t choice options be valuable to students that even the Prichard Committee now recognizes are simply not being adequately served in the traditional public schools?