"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes." -- Mark Twain --
As hard as it is to believe, sometimes inaccurate statements enter the public discourse. Well, we've come to the rescue with "Rapid Response Reality Check."
Whenever someone makes a public statement or claim about public education in Kentucky that doesn't quite jibe with the facts, our tireless team of education experts will shine the light of reality on it.
Claim: Many students don't try their hardest on the Kentucky Core Content Tests because they know the results won't affect their grades. Since they don't do their best, it isn't fair to use the results to determine how well the school is doing.
Fact: Students who take the tests answer a questionnaire afterward about how hard they tried. More than 80 percent say they try their hardest. Of the less than 20 percent who say they didn't try their hardest, a significant number say they didn't have to because the test was easy.
Student motivation is an important issue, because motivating students is part of a school's job. The Commonwealth Accountability Testing System was designed to measure and hold schools accountable for their success in delivering a well-defined curriculum to all students, and that does include the ability of adults to motivate students to do their best. The measure of school success naturally includes all influences the school has when measuring student ability. The test is valid for this purpose.
It's important to note that student effort differs among schools. This implies that school climate and leadership can impact student motivation in either direction. The chart below shows 2003 Student Effort Data taken from the 2003 Student Questionnaire administered along with the KCCT.
Claim: The Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) of 1990 contained provisions that required or encouraged consolidation or merger of school districts.
Fact: There were no substantive provisions in the law on this issue. The court case that led to the enactment of KERA concluded that all state K-12 education statutes were unconstitutional; therefore, all those statutes were included in KERA, even those that were simply repealed and re-enacted.
Statutes relating to mergers of school districts were repealed and re-enacted, but those laws (KRS 160.040, 160.041, 160.042, 160.044, 161.810) simply outline the process for merger, which is a decision made by local school district officials.
Claim: Public education in Kentucky can be adequately funded without additional revenue – we just need to cut waste in the education bureaucracy.
Fact: It's popular to assume that government is getting bigger and more wasteful all the time. If we could just stop wasting money on "the bureaucracy," the popular sentiment claims, then we would have plenty to spend on things that are more important.
That's popular, because it suggests that government already has all the revenue it really needs. But as far as public education in Kentucky is concerned, it just isn't true.
The Kentucky Department of Education has already had its personnel cut by almost 18 percent and its administration funding cut by more than 25 percent just since July 1, 2002. There were 841 KDE employees in 2001, and there will be 693 in 2004; the net loss is 148.
The "waste" that has already been cut includes: textbooks for Kentucky children; rewards for schools that meet their achievement goals; and regional service centers that provided direct services to teachers in struggling schools.
Instead of talking about cutting more "waste," let's see what we'd get if we eliminated the Kentucky Department of Education altogether -- and captured its entire operating budget of $23.5 million for FY2004:
With that money you could:
• Extend Kentucky's school year by 1.7 instructional days. ($14 million per instructional day).
• Pay for one-half of the increase in the state's contribution to teacher health insurance premiums over the biennium.
• Give all Kentucky Teachers a one-time raise – of $509 before taxes.
• Operate 645 school buses – for one day.
Of course, then there would no longer be a Kentucky Department of Education. And that would mean:
• No oversight for more than $3 billion in state money that goes to school districts. Our school districts would spend this money, and maybe they'd spend it wisely and maybe they wouldn't, but nobody would know.
• No state accountability for school improvement. Our kids would still be spending hours in school every day and maybe they'd be learning a lot and maybe they wouldn't – nobody would have any way of knowing.
Finding efficiencies and cutting waste in KDE is not just important, it's required. But the reality is this: The amount of money to be gained through efficiencies is decimal dust in the face of Kentucky's revenue shortfall.
The fiscal issues related to public education in the commonwealth are too important and complex to trivialize with simplistic generalizations.
Claim: Kentucky spends too much money on administration and should apply more resources to instruction.
Fact: Like every state, Kentucky constantly strives to balance the amount it spends to teach public school students with the amount it spends on administrative costs in schools.
Average per-pupil spending in Kentucky is about $6,850 each year. Out of that money, schools pay for instruction, administration and operations.
On average, schools in Kentucky spend $4,500 each year to provide instruction to each public school student in the state. That cost includes such items as activities inside and outside the classroom, extra help for students, guidance services, staff training and professional development and school libraries.
Schools also spend money on operations -- facilities, transportation and food services are the major operations variables. Each year, schools spend a bit over $1,500 per child for operations needs.
Each year, schools spend about $800 per child in administrative costs, which include local board of education activities, the local superintendent's office, school councils and training and professional development for school- and district-level administrators.
Instructional spending adds up to be 66% percent of the total school and district expenditures each year. Operations cost 22% of the total and administrative costs take 12% of the total.
Claim: Kentucky has had to adopt two testing systems because of the Federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. Instead, there should be just one testing system, which would be cheaper and still comply with federal law.
Fact: The Kentucky Board of Education recently adopted an approach for complying with NCLB that preserves our Commonwealth Accountability Testing System (CATS) and Kentucky's high expectations for all students, while adding value to the system.
This means that we still have one, single testing system in Kentucky -- The Commonwealth Accountability Testing System (CATS).
While CATS remains our only testing system, Kentucky will comply with NCLB by interpreting and reporting the test results in some additional new ways to meet the federal accountability requirements.
The only change in the CATS tests themselves will be the addition of reading in grades 5 and 8, and the addition of math in grades 4 and 7, as required by the federal law.
Claim: The Kentucky Core Content Test is expensive and could be replaced by a less costly off-the-shelf test.
Fact: Kentucky's state test for school accountability is not expensive. The cost, about $10 million, comes out of the roughly $3.3 billion in state funds budgeted for public education. Those are huge figures, but 640,000 is a big number, too -- and that's how many Kentucky children we are educating in public schools. The cost of testing these students figures out to only about $20 per student -- less than one third of one percent of our per-pupil spending in Kentucky. That's a very small price to pay to know how well our schools are doing in every content area and at every grade level.
The state test cannot be replaced by an inexpensive off-the-shelf test, such as CTBS/5, because no such test meets the requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The federal government requires states to have an assessment that uses multiple kinds of measures and is aligned with the state's standards. Inexpensive off-the-shelf tests don't fit the bill.
CLAIM: Kentucky should discard CATS and use the "national test" to determine school accountability.
FACT: There is no national test. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 requires states to develop and implement reading and mathematics testing in grades 3 through 8, and those tests are to be aligned with each states' standards. NCLB does not provide for a national test, nor does it enable direct comparisons between states.
Currently, through the Kentucky Core Content Test, the state tests students in reading at grades 4, 7 and 10. Mathematics is tested at grades 5, 8, and 11. Through the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills (CTBS/5), Kentucky's 3rd-graders, 6th-graders and 9th-graders are tested in reading and mathematics. Kentucky plans to add reading tests at grades 5 and 8 and mathematics tests at grades 4 and 7 to comply with NCLB.
CLAIM: The ACT should be used to hold Kentucky high schools accountable.
FACT: The ACT is designed to assess high school students' general educational development and their ability to complete college work. The multiple-choice tests cover four subject areas: English, mathematics, reading and science reasoning.
ACT is not designed to be a school accountability indicator. The tests are geared toward college-bound high school students.
CLAIM: Flat ACT scores indicate that Kentucky's educational system is not working.
FACT: ACT scores in Kentucky and the nation have remained flat over the past few years. Analysts say there are a number of reasons for this, and the primary one is that more students are taking the test. In 2002, 72 percent of Kentucky's high school seniors took the ACT, 10 percent more than those who took the test in 1990.
ACT scores confirm what Kentucky's tests show: Performance and progress at the lower grade levels tends to be higher than that of middle and high schools.
As ACT moves to add writing components, it will more closely resemble the Commonwealth Accountability Testing System (CATS). Further analysis is currently underway of the correlation between the Kentucky Core Content Tests (KCCT) and other measures of academic performance, including ACT.
Scores from another college-preparation examination, the SAT, have increased slightly over the past 10 years. Only about 10 percent of Kentucky students take the SAT, and that percentage has not changed a great deal in the past 10 years. Kentucky students' average performance on the SAT tends to be higher than that of students nationwide.
CLAIM: Kentucky's gains on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) are tainted by a high exclusion rate for students with disabilities or limited-English proficiency.
FACT: The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as "The Nation's Report Card," is the only nationally-representative and continuing assessment of what America's students know and can do in various subject areas. Since 1969, assessments have been conducted periodically in reading, mathematics, science, writing, U.S. history, civics, geography and the arts.
According to NAEP, Kentucky was one of only three states to make statistically significant gains in 4th-grade reading from 1992 to 1998 and from 1994 to 1998. (Connecticut and Colorado were the others.)
In late 2001, NAEP released results from its 2000 mathematics and science assessments. The results showed that Kentucky's 8th-graders made significant progress from 1996 to 2000 in those subjects. In both math and science, 8th-graders gained five points, which NAEP considers "statistically significant." In science, Kentucky's 8th-graders' score was, for the first time, above the national average.
NAEP is administered to a sample of students across the country, but does not provide scores for individual students or schools. Instead, it offers results regarding subject-matter achievement, instructional experiences and school environment for populations of students (e.g., fourth-graders) and subgroups of those populations (e.g., female students, Hispanic students).
In Kentucky's assessment system, all public school students are tested on the Kentucky Core Content. Students with disabilities may have accommodations (as outlined in their Individual Education Plans, or IEPs) in order to take the tests -- someone to read the test questions aloud, special computer programs or other forms of assistance.
Until 1996, the NAEP tests did not allow accommodations for students with disabilities or those of limited-English proficiency. The NAEP tests still only allow certain accommodations, and so Kentucky students whose IEPs call for those accommodations cannot participate in the tests.
When the issue of excluding students with disabilities or those with limited-English proficiency arose, the NAEP governing board studied it carefully. In general, more students nationwide are being excluded from the NAEP samples in which accommodations were not permitted. NAEP officials say that this is due in large part to the diligence of states implementing Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) provisions in their own statewide assessments. Local school district officials, accustomed to providing accommodations in their state testing programs, may opt to exclude students from NAEP testing rather than including them without their customary accommodations.
In 2000, Kentucky excluded 8.4 percent of 4th-grade students from the NAEP science test in which accommodations were not permitted. Seventeen states, along with Department of Defense schools, had lower rates of exclusion. Twenty-three states, along with Guam and American Samoa, had higher rates. The range was from 4.2 percent (Tennessee) to 15.3 percent (Texas). The average nationwide was 6 percent.
At the 8th-grade level, 9.4 percent of Kentucky's students were excluded from the test in which accommodations were not permitted. Twenty-seven states, along with Guam and Department of Defense schools, had lower rates. Eleven states, along with American Samoa, had higher rates. The range was from 3.6 percent (Nebraska) to 13.7 percent (New York). The average nationwide was 6 percent.
From 1996 to 2000, Kentucky's 8th-grade exclusion rate rose five percent. Seven states, along with Guam, had lower exclusion rates in 2000 than in 1996. Three states -- Massachusetts, New York and North Carolina -- and the Department of Defense schools had larger increases in the percentages of students excluded than Kentucky.
According to NAEP, at the 4th-grade level, 11 percent of Kentucky's students are considered to have disabilities. At the 8th-grade level, 12 percent are considered to have disabilities. Nationwide, the percentages are the same for both grade levels.
After much analysis and discussion, NAEP announced that, even though Kentucky's rate of exclusion had gotten higher, it would not have affected the overall progress 4th- and 8th-graders have made on the test.
CLAIM: Gains on the Kentucky Core Content Test (KCCT) are not borne out by performance on national tests.
FACT: Since 1996, Kentucky's end of primary (3rd grade), 6th-graders and 9th-graders have participated in the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills (CTBS/5), a nationally-normed test that covers three subject areas: reading, language arts and mathematics. CTBS/5 contributes five percent to schools' total accountability indices.
In 1996, exiting primary students scored in the 50th percentile; 6th-graders in the 48th; and 9th-graders in the 50th. In 2002, exiting primary students scored in the 60th percentile; 6th-graders in the 53rd; and 9th graders in the 51st.
As with other measures and as seen nationwide, the early grades tend to make more progress and show higher performance on assessments. But, Kentucky students as a whole are showing progress on CTBS/5.
CLAIM: The continued use of the same "form" of the CTBS is cause for concern.
FACT: As a nationally-normed test, CTBS is periodically revamped, resulting in new forms of the test. Kentucky currently uses Form 5.
Kentucky could have replaced the CTBS/5 with an alternate form of the assessment on an annual basis, but that would result in an increased cost and logistical complexity. The National Technical Advisory Panel on Assessment and Accountability (NTAPAA) has recommended that we consider using alternate forms of CTBS on an annual basis, and the Department of Education is considering that recommendation.
CTBS counts for only five percent of schools' overall accountability indices. While it is an important component, Kentucky has not narrowed its curriculum to address just what is assessed on CTBS, since our system requires instructional focus on a broader range of content and difficulty.
CLAIM : The reuse of items on the Kentucky Core Content Test is cause for concern.
FACT: Test questions, developed by Kentucky educators, are field-tested before they are included in the actual assessment. If an item passes the field test and is chosen by teacher reviewers to be included in the test question pool, it cannot be made available for use until two years after the field test.
Each of the seven subject areas tested under the KCCT has six forms. Each school receives all six forms, and the forms are presented to students in a random manner.
It is important to consider the number of accountability items on the KCCT as compared to that of typical norm-referenced tests (NRTs).
The typical NRT in a particular content area uses approximately 35 to 50 multiple-choice items, and all students take the same items. On the KCCT, within the content areas of reading, mathematics, science and social studies, the total number of multiple-choice items used for accountability purposes ranges from approximately 120 to 144. The corresponding numbers for open-response items range from approximately 30 to 36. The corresponding numbers for arts & humanities and practical living/vocational studies are slightly smaller.
The available item pool from which these items are drawn is much larger. If teachers were teaching to these items, the item pool they would need to address in instruction is huge.
All Kentucky teachers are required to read and abide by 703 KAR 5:080, the Administration Code for Testing, and sign a document to this effect. To date, no evidence reported through the allegation process or statistical analyses suggest that teachers are taking this responsibility lightly. While some allegations are reported and acted upon, the Kentucky Department of Education feels that most classroom teachers are acting both professionally and responsibly.
Say What?
Have you overheard a curious claim about public education in Kentucky? If you'd like us to run a Reality Check, just drop a note to lisa.gross@education.ky.gov.