How will the new Jefferson County Schools of Innovation help students in Persistently Low-Achieving Schools?

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Can Jefferson County even afford these new school ideas?

Last night the Jefferson County Board of Education selected two models to be the district’s first “Schools of Innovation” under Kentucky's “Districts of Innovation” law. Collectively, the choices were disappointing.

Jefferson County has the state’s largest concentration of “Persistently Low-Achieving” high schools – 10 of them. But, neither of the new schools of innovation models pays any attention to high school level activities. There are no high schools of innovation ideas in either choice.

Even the two ideas that were selected may prove problematic to actually implement. WDRB reports that board of education member Debbie Wesslund said at the meeting:

“We need more details – we don't know how we will pay for this, we don't have specifics as to where (they will be located).”

So, the good ship “Innovation” has launched in Louisville with the best of intentions, but it is sailing into uncharted waters and hasn’t even set a course towards the most troubled areas. In fact, Louisville’s good ship Innovation may not have enough fuel in its tank to complete any mission.

Bluntly put, this first effort in Jefferson County stands in sharp contrast to the good things that could happen for kids if Kentucky had adopted a real charter school law instead of the weak sister “Districts of Innovation” bill. With real charter schools, innovation comes to the ingrown and inward looking traditional public school system from outside sources including parents and others such as concerned colleges. Real charter schools tap new resources the traditional system never considers.

With Kentucky’s Districts of Innovation, whatever change happens can only come from teachers within the existing system. Even more limiting, in most cases 70 percent of the teachers in a school have to agree before a school can become an innovation school. So, the Districts/Schools of Innovation program mostly looks like a recipe for the status quo, which is exactly what Jefferson County will now get from its Schools of Innovation program in its numerous low-achieving high schools.

Here is how WFPL describes Jefferson County’s Schools of Innovation winners:

• The Catalpa School proposal is led by several JCPS elementary school teachers. The school would be open for pre-schoolers to fifth grade, with the potential to grow into middle school. The heart of this program is a Waldorf-style education that "balances art, music, drama, movement, and experiences in nature to promote creativity and critical thinking."

• Louisville Reach Academy proposal is also led by a group of JCPS teachers. It would offer students a year-round school that serves kindergartners through eighth grade. The school would also have "wraparound services." "The one site will include opportunities for medical and dental services, family therapy, government services, adult education, job shadowing, and family education workshops." The program would also have small class sizes and iPads for every student.

So, one of these schools exclusively serves elementary school kids. The other cuts off interest at the eighth grade, diluting its focus across many elementary school grades, as well.

Now, here’s the problem: As the chart below shows, almost half of the entire group of 39 current Persistently Low-Achieving Schools (PLAs) (now euphemistically called “Priority Schools”) in Kentucky are found in Jefferson County. However, the majority of these Jefferson County PLAs are high schools, and the rest are middle schools. None are elementary schools.

JeffCo PLAs KPREP Math and Reading in 2012 and 2013

Furthermore, most of those Jefferson County PLA high schools are not exactly making progress in key areas like math and reading, as the copious amounts of pink shading in the table above shows.

So, how are the Catalpa School and the Louisville Reach Academy going to do much to help with those upper grade school problems?

And why didn’t a single Louisville Persistently Low-Achieving School become a School of Innovation. Can it be there is no spirit of innovation to be found in any of these many low performing schools?

Thus, it looks like the “innovation” in Louisville isn’t going to fix miserable performance in schools like the Academy at Shawnee, Doss High, and others – most especially Western High, where drops in both math and reading scores were universal from 2012 to 2013. Louisville’s “innovation” isn’t even focused on those grade levels. Go figure!

By the way, among the two runner up Schools of Innovation proposals that were not selected, one was yet another grade school level idea. The other runner up proposal would have worked on the high school level. However, what is interesting about this model, called the “Next-Generation Community School,” is that it wasn’t even proposed by Kentucky educators. WFPL reports that this one comes from “educators from Michigan who work in a struggling district there.” That’s no surprise; Michigan is a charter school state. Charter schools stimulate such innovation.

Districts of Innovation problems are not limited to Louisville, either. In yesterday’s meeting of the Kentucky Legislature’s Interim Joint Education Committee, they talked about both the PLAs and the Districts of Innovation Program. In year one of the innovation program, 16 districts applied but only four were chosen. However, in the second innovation selection round, only four districts even bothered to apply. So, the traditional public school system’s interest in innovation may be sinking faster than a high school dropout’s chances of having a decent adult life.

At present, the promises of the Districts of Innovation program remain unfulfilled. It isn’t certain those promises will ever be fulfilled in places like Louisville. This is why we need a real charter school law in Kentucky, one that will energize and empower independent, creative people who will put the most desperate needs of students, not school system adults, first. Unlike Districts of Innovation, creativity in charter schools is driven by parents and others such as college faculty who can see needs and are focused on making things happen for kids.