In 1990, Kentucky launched what may be the nation's most ambitious education reforms. These reforms were the direct result of a state supreme court decision much like Ohio's DeRolph vs. State. As a result, many look south to Kentucky for an education reform model.
Years of experience with the "Kentucky Model," however, reveal it is no panacea for education woes in Ohio or any other state.
The Kentucky legislature's first priority was meeting the letter of its Supreme Court decision: Reduce spending inequities among school districts.
This task turned out to be fairly easy. From 1990 to 1995, Kentucky boosted education spending by $1.1 billion, a 21% increase in per pupil spending after adjusting for inflation.(1) As a result Kentucky's national ranking went from 41st to 21st in spending per student(2) and the overall gap between wealthy and poor school districts fell by 50%.(3)
The second part of the reform package - improving school performance - proved to be much more complicated and decidedly less successful.
Kentucky policymakers developed statewide educational goals and incentives to boost learning and achievement. The linchpin of the achievement reforms is a program called the Kentucky Instruction Results Information System, or KIRIS. Additional payments to superior schools and teachers are the carrots that supposedly create incentives to use innovative education techniques. Sanctions against schools that do not perform are the sticks that induce schools to adopt more effective approaches to education.
Now, seven years later, most Kentucky schools appear stuck in neutral.
This wasn't clear early on. The Kentucky Accountability Index, a measure used by Kentucky's state education department to track school performance, increased in the first 3 years by 22% for fourth graders, 13% for eighth graders, and 9% for twelfth graders.(4)
These gains, however, may have been a mirage. When the KIRIS results were compared to other states, no improvement was found. In fact, for students evaluated using the federal National Assessment of Education Progress reading test, scores for Kentucky students declined.(5)
As a result, many observers believe KIRIS is an unreliable way to track student and school performance. A report from the Kentucky legislature's Office of Education Accountability concluded that the "gains in KIRIS scores are substantially inflated and provide the public with a misleading view of improvements in student performance." (6)
On top of this, the much vaunted use of student writing samples, or "portfolios," to evaluate student performance has proven unreliable. A 1993 audit of 94 schools found all had inflated grades, forcing auditors to reduce writing index scores by an average of 28%.(7) By 1996, despite improvements in quality control, 25% of the audited schools were still out of compliance.(8) Scores had to be reduced by an average of 8% in 1996.(9) The State also found numerous examples of fraud and abuse where students have been directly aided by teachers in the classroom.(10)
Thus, interpreting the Kentucky test results is problematic at best, impossible at worst. This may be one reason a survey of 1,892 Kentuckians found that "making the KIRIS test more valid and reliable" was the most critical thing needed to improve Kentucky's reform efforts.(11)
The early evidence, then, suggests that KERA has done little more than narrow spending gaps. It has had no perceptible impact on student achievement.
Ohio policymakers need to move forward with a comprehensive reform effort that restructures the entire public education system, but Kentucky is not the model for change.
An alternative that avoids the costly and pervasive bureaucracy implicit in KERA is one where dollars follow students to whatever schools they choose. This is a "child-centered" approach to education reform where accountability is imbedded in school funding. Child-centered education provides the right mix of carrots and sticks to generate real educational innovation and it institutionalizes the drive for educational excellence in every public school for every child.
### Sam Staley, Ph.D., is Vice President for Research at The Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions, a Dayton-based nonprofit, nonpartisan research and education organization of Ohio professors and scholars. He has testified numerous times before the education and finance committees in the Ohio legislature, and his articles have appeared in professional and popular publications, including the Economics of Education Review, Constitutional Political Economy, the Columbus Dispatch, the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and the Dayton Daily News.
Permission to reprint, in whole or in part, with or without endnotes, is granted provided credit is given to the author and The Buckeye Institute.
For more information please contact The Buckeye Institute at (937) 224-8352.
1 Total education spending data from the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Per pupil spending data are from the Kentucky Department of Education. In 1990, Kentucky spent $2.1 billion on primary and secondary education in 1990. By 1996, Kentucky was spending $3.7 billion. The cumulative increase in spending over this period, without adjusting for inflation, was $1.5 billion.
2 In the 1994-95 academic year, Kentucky spent an average $4,652 per pupil. These data are from the Kentucky Department of Education's web site: http://www.kde.state.ky.us The mandates to increase spending and reduce fiscal inequities were addressed directly by enacting Tier One and Tier Two funding schemes. First, KERA required an "across-the-board" expenditure to be allocated per pupil, guaranteeing a certain level of funding for all students in the state. However, districts were not limited to allocating the across-the-board amount. Localities could increase school funding through tax increases or resource reallocations up to 15% of the base guarantee. These funds were matched by funds from the state. In addition, Tier Two funding also allowed localities to augment their school funding by up to 30% of the first two components. Interestingly, the result has been to boost spending mainly through greater local effort.
3 Ibid. The spending gap between districts went from $1,199 to $588 per pupil.
4 Jane Clark Lindle, Joseph Petrosko, and Roger Pankratz, 1996 Review of Research on the Kentucky Education Reform Act (Frankfort, KY: Kentucky Institute for Education Research, May, 1997), pp. 17.
5 Ibid., p. 19.
6 Cited in Ibid.
7 The first audit concerned schools where scores were out of line with expectations. The second audit included these schools as well as a random sample of other schools. Kentucky Department of Education, Division of Portfolio Initiatives, table 12-2, p. 12-6.
8 1996 Writing Portfolio Audit: Final Report, Kentucky Department of Education, Division of Portfolio Initiatives, September 23, 1996, p. 5.
9 Kentucky Department of Education, Division of Portfolio Initiatives.
10 Steve Stecklow, "Kentucky's Teachers Get Bonuses, but Some are Caught Cheating," Wall Street Journal, September 2, 1997, p. A1, A5.
11 The survey included the general public, school parents, principals, school board members, and teachers. Clark, Petrosko, and Pankratz, 1996 Review of Research on the Kentucky Education Reform Act, p. 21.