Kentucky and Tennessee -- Football and Schools

My column that appeared in the Hendersonville Star-News on Friday, December 2, 2011:

As I watched UK claim its first football victory over UT in 26 years, I began to ponder what might happen if the tables were turned. How would Tennesseans react if Kentucky beat Tennessee in football 26 years in a row? Already, the first coach to lose to Kentucky in 26 years is facing some griping from Vols fans. Lose to UK two years in a row and there will certainly be talk of a coach on the “hot seat.” While Tennessee certainly owns football supremacy, at least Kentucky has basketball.

There is, however, one arena in which Kentucky consistently beats Tennessee: Education. Since the 1991 passage of the Kentucky Education Reform Act, Kentucky schools have been on a tireless forward march. Indicator after indicator demonstrates that Kentucky has far out-paced Tennessee in education results over the last twenty years. And, Kentucky keeps moving forward. Meanwhile, Tennesseans watch as reform efforts here get off to noble starts only to fizzle out when the going gets tough (Career Ladder, BEP 2.0).

Let’s take a look at the indicators to see just where we stand in relation to our neighbor to the north. For starters, eight states test 100% of high school graduates on the ACT. Of those eight states, Tennessee ranks 7th in statewide average score. Perhaps not surprisingly, Tennessee spends less per pupil than all of the states ahead of us. Kentucky is one of those states and spends $1000-$1500 more per pupil (depending on the source) than we do.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress is the one test that students in all states take in 4th and 8th grade. It measures proficiency levels in math, reading, science and writing. Year after year, Kentucky’s students demonstrate greater proficiency than Tennessee’s. The most recent results in math and reading showed that Kentucky’s students tested 8 points ahead of Tennessee in reading and 10 points ahead in math. These numbers held even when looking at those students on free and reduced lunch. In Science, Kentucky’s 4th graders hold a 13-point lead over Tennessee’s; by 8th grade that lead expands to 18 points.

Finally, in terms of college degree attainment, nearly one in three Kentuckians holds a 4-year degree. On the other hand, barely one in five Tennesseans has a college diploma. An individual with a college diploma has been shown to earn $1 million more over a lifetime than a high school graduate. Moreover, if you’re a business deciding where to locate, you’ll find Kentucky has more college graduates available. If you took 1000 Tennesseans and 1000 Kentuckians to a job interview, 100 more of those Kentuckians (300 vs. 200) would have a college degree. That makes it difficult for Tennessee to compete.

So, let’s assume we don’t want to keep on losing to Kentucky. And, we should certainly be outraged by the consistent beating we’re taking. What do we do?

Over the last twenty years, Kentucky has maintained a focus on bold reform with three essential components: 1) Invest in schools 2) Invest in teachers and 3) Invest in students. As I noted, Kentucky spends $1000-$1500 more per student than Tennessee. Teachers there also make about $2000 more per year than Tennessee’s.

Kentucky’s success is not just about more money, though. It’s about smart investments that get proven results. Kentucky invests in teachers by way of the Kentucky Teacher Internship Program (KTIP). KTIP is an intensive first-year teaching experience during which new teachers are assigned a mentor and an advisor from a local university. Those two individuals along with the school’s principal form the new teacher’s internship committee. The teacher is observed at least nine times in that first year and given constant feedback. At the end of the year, the teacher is either recommended for a teaching license, recommended for an additional KTIP year, or not advanced to a full teaching license. This focus on the critical first year of teaching, while certainly not perfect, does emphasize teacher development and demonstrate Kentucky’s commitment to ensuring that proven teachers stay in the profession. While Tennessee has adopted new evaluations, there is no support structure similar to Kentucky’s for new teachers.

Kentucky has also committed to extra learning time – providing targeted tutoring to students most in need of extra assistance. Again, this research-based approach is paying dividends as can be seen by Kentucky’s solid NAEP and ACT performance. Smart investments, not just throwing money at the problem, pay off in the long term.

For 26 years, the last Saturday in November has meant certain victory for Tennessee football. I have no doubt that UT will again claim victory over Kentucky – maybe for another 26 years. While the folks on Coach Dooley’s staff focus on getting the football right, we have a more important challenge – building strong, effective schools. Our children should have more to look forward to than singing Rocky Top in Neyland Stadium as UK heads back to Lexington after another loss.

Getting the "Teacher Quality" Talk Right

In this article, President and CEO of SCORE (Tennessee's Statewide Collaborative on Reforming Education) Jamie Woodson says, "The number one factor of a student's success is effective teaching in the classroom."

This is the claim made by lots of education reformers these days. The same reformers go on to tell us we need to better evaluate teachers and that means evaluating them using student test scores. Doing so, they argue, will help us identify ineffective teachers who can be fired. And because we'll be getting rid of the least effective (by their definition) teachers, teacher quality will improve and so will student performance.

Here's the problem: The data do NOT suggest that effective teaching is the number one factor of a student's success. At all.

Here's what research on this topic does say. A student's teacher is the most significant school-based factor in determining student achievement. The key word is school-based. Also, the same data suggests that the teacher accounts for up to 50% of a student's success among all school-based variables. The second most significant school-based variable is school leadership. Other factors play a role. The building, environment, peers, resources. All of those make up the remainder of the school-based variables.

Of course, the school-based variables are not the ONLY variables that impact student achievement. So, yes, it is important to have strong teachers.

But, the education and income levels of the student's parents remain the most significant overall predictor of student success. This has been true for some 40 years (probably more, but it's what the researchers have been showing us for at least 40 years).

If you have parents who didn't graduate from high school, it makes it much more likely you won't graduate from high school. If you come from a low-income family, you are much more likely to run into struggles that make focusing on school difficult.

So, sure, we should focus on teacher quality. Because, of all the school-based factors, it is the most significant. But we shouldn't lose sight of other school-based factors -- like prinicpal quality. Or buildings -- it's absolutely not okay to send kids to school in portable trailers. Our kids deserve adequate resources, too. That means the ability to take home text books --and access to texts that are not outdated.

And, we should also realize that there are larger, systemic problems (poverty, access to health care) that impact significantly student outcomes. Sure, this CAN be overcome in some cases, but usually not without a convergence of amazing interventions in a child's life. Perhaps the teacher with low "value-added" scores convinces her struggling student who lives in poverty to keep trying and to stay in school -- and so he becomes the first high school graduate in the family because someone believed in him.

Comprehensive education reform would 1) listen to teachers (they ARE the experts) 2) put in place the reforms teachers suggest 3) adequately fund schools so kids have clean, safe buildings and adequate resources and 4) address the ENTIRE school as well as community inputs.