Richmond, KY - Twenty years after the Kentucky legislature passed the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA), one of the most sweeping educational reform acts in the history of the United States, educators, parents, teachers and politicians, while excited by the progress in educational achievement, tempered that emotion with a variety of cautionary statements during the recent History of Education in Kentucky Forum held at Eastern Kentucky University (EKU).
Noting that there has been significant improvement over the last 20 years due to the base KERA proved, Dr. Bill Ellis, Emeritus Professor History at EKU and author of the book, "A History of Education in Kentucky," which prompted the event, challenged participants and attendees to continue the improvement.
"The challenges are so great that we can't just sit back and think we're done," Ellis said.
"Many of the historical problems that caused a decline in educational achievement in Kentucky are still impacting our ability to educate all our children and we still have a long way to go."
From an historical perspective, according to Ellis, the Civil War brought educational progress in Kentucky first to a stand-still and then a decline.
"Kentucky is divided by a lot of things including the number of counties in the state, which we can claim as the third highest number in the United States," Ellis said. "The impact of that is a weakened tax base that, in conjunction with a culture that does not value education results in reduced financial support for education, inefficiencies and inequalities - areas that KERA has helped address, but there is still much to be done."
Ellis added that the lack of emphasis the average Kentuckian places on education creates a ripple effect that affects everyone.
"If kids aren't expected to go to school, they aren't counted when it comes to allocating state financial resources," he said. "In addition, between 15 and 20 percent of our kids drop-out before completing high school, which studies show results in a higher incidence of social problems as well as not being prepared for post-secondary education and lowered earnings potential."
Former two-term Kentucky governor and current University of Pikeville President, Paul Patton agreed.
"We've made progress, but we are running with a pack of people running faster than we were, and we're still behind," Patton said. "We started out so far behind, in part because our population worked in industries such as farming, coal mining and other manual labor jobs that saw no need for higher education, that we need to work even harder to achieve a better than average education for the students in our state."
Stu Silberman, Executive Director for the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, cited national educational rankings which moved Kentucky from 49th to 33rd as an indicator of Kentucky's progress toward academic excellence.
"Although there has been great progress made, there is a tremendous amount of work to do, especially in terms of narrowing achievement gaps," Silberman said. "Educating children is extremely complex and we need to simplify the issues and indentify where to focus our energies to make the biggest changes."
Silberman listed four questions that should be used in that quest: What do we expect kids to know? How do we know if they've learned it? What will we do if they haven't learned it? What do we do if they already know it?
"We need to have standards and solid curriculum in place so teachers know what kids are expected to learn and then testing that shows first, where kids are, and second, makes our schools accountable to the public. My deepest concern is that kids in schools are not achieving at high levels when we know they can and should be."
Utilizing testing systems currently available to demonstrate educational achievement and accountability was a cause of concern for several members of the panels.
"Tests don't always get us where we need to be," Terry Holliday, Kentucky Education Commissioner said. "We are focused on merging the four "Cs" (collaboration, communications, critical thinking and creativity) with the three "Rs" and we need to find ways to measure critical thinking."
Dr. Erik Myrup, University of Kentucky history professor and co-founder of Fayette Advocates for Balance in the Classroom added that creativity is also threatened in schools because it does not lend itself to simple standardized assessment.
"My kids are learning to fill-out bubbles instead of learning to think for themselves and thinking outside the box. Both the processes of creativity and critical thinking are threatened by high stakes testing that will eventually destroy a child's love of learning."
With a variety of ideas tossed out to address concerns about how far and how fast Kentucky's education system will progress, forum participants all agreed with Patton that developing curriculum that is both standardized and individualized, addressing social issues that impact the learning environment and finding additional financial resources isn't enough.
"We're hopeful that we've entered a new era, one that focuses students, parents, educators, legislators and others on the importance of education for all of Kentucky's children."