Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin is moving fast to smash public schools. First, he ousted several members of the state board of education, which promptly ousted the state commissioner of education. The board hired Wayne Lewis, an outspoken charter school advocate as interim state commissioner.
Lewis announced that he recommends a state takeover of the state’s largest school district, Jefferson County, which includes Louisville. Lewis is an education professor, with no prior experience as a superintendent.
Lots of blah-blah about achievement gaps and test scores but no evident plan to fix any of the problems he describes. And no reference to any successful state takeovers in any other state.
This may be Gov. Bevin’s payback for teacher walkouts.
Prediction: This will not end well.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
Found this in a report on the proposed takeover.
Jerry Stephenson is a member of the Kentucky Pastors in Action Coalition and a charter schools advocate. He wants state education officials to take over the management of Louisville schools and renegotiate teachers’ employment contracts.
“They’ve got a system that is broken. And that board does not have the courage to re-do that collective bargaining agreement. Until that happens, there’s just not going to be any major structural changes and that’s our problem.”
The pastors in action want to bust the union and pay teachers less. Kentucky has been ranked amount the “least educated” states. Evidently that is exactly how the politicians and the pastors want it to be. Interesting the CCSSO put in a pitch for the former head of education in the state. http://www.ccsso.org/blog/ccsso-releases-statement-kentucky-chief
Bevin is a coward and a fool.
“This may not end well” for the GOP on Tuesday, November 6, 2018
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Ed reform has redefined public education again:
“Secretary DeVos has always said education is an investment in students, not in schools or school systems, and public education is any education that serves the public”
This is NOT what these people ran on. They lied to us.
The end goal was always a 100% voucher system. They hid this from the public because it’s unpopular.
Have the courage of your convictions. Tell the public the goal is to eradicate public schools and replace them with a low cost voucher to be used as a subsidy.
The voucher will be worth between 5k and 7k and families will be expected to make up the rest- it will function exactly like Obamacare.
Diane, the decision to privatize all public schools was made years ago in ed reform.
It’s why they don’t invest in existing public schools or return any value to public school families. It’s why our schools are excluded from DC conferences and why one never hears from public school parents.
It has nothing to do with “the public”. They have contempt for us. They know best what should happen to our public schools.
Yes, “they” think of themselves as the powerful nobility and the rest of us as lowly pissant peasants to be shoved out of the way or smashed to make room for them to pass.
As a Kentuckian, I see too much wrong here to ignore.
Gov. Bevin didn’t “oust” any state board members. Their terms expired normally and he then appointed new individuals to fill those empty slots. The implication that the governor somehow prematurely fired those board members is incorrect.
The “blah-blah” about test scores includes the deep shock that Kentucky’s black students were only rated 9% proficient or above on the 2017 NAEP Grade 8 Math assessment and did little better on Grade 4 math or reading at either grade level. That follows decades of essentially no statistically significant NAEP improvement for Kentucky’s blacks. About 50% of all of the state’s black students are now found in Jefferson County.
Lewis hasn’t even spent one week on the job as interim superintendent, so expecting him to have finalized plans at this time is clearly unreasonable. In any event, Lewis has announced that he will allow the existing superintendent in Jefferson County to continue to conduct day-to-day operations and that the school board will also continue to function in an advisory capacity.
So far as takeovers go, Kentucky saw a fairly successful takeover and turn-around in its Floyd County system. Here is one news article about that: http://www.kentucky.com/living/family/article42639549.html
As far as things not ending well, that has been going on for Kentucky’s largest racial minority group for decades. For them, at least, it is hard to imagine any ending not offering at least some improvement.
What will the state do to improve the test scores if black students. Since 50% of black students in Kentucky do not live in Jefferson County, why doesn’t Governor Nevin take over the whole state? Surely someone has a plan. Just seizing a district and leaving everyone in place is no plan at all. Where has Interim Commissioner demonstrated his skills at turning entire districts around?
Diane, you must have been typing fast. It’s Governor Bevin, with a “B.”
The KY Department of Education was working on a gap plan, which I am not sure would have been very successful, before the old board’s terms ran out.
I expect the new interim commissioner, who is an African-American, by the way, will be very sensitive to developing a better statewide plan, but he has not been in office long enough to put that together.
The new chairman of the Kentucky Board of Education is also an African-American, by the way, and from Jefferson County. I think it highly unlikely that the statewide gaps will not get attention.
As far as what is going on in Louisville, there are major, complex issues that have festered for a long time. I am still going through the new management audit and don’t have the full picture at this time, but I sense from what I have read so far that there are institutional problems going beyond what can be blamed only on the former superintendent and the former Jefferson County Board of Education.
Also, Jefferson County is far from the first school district Kentucky has taken over since passage of the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990. I mentioned the Floyd County situation in an earlier comment and provided a link to a nice summary of what happened there in the Herald-Leader newspaper from Lexington.
At least two other districts, Breathitt and Menifee Counties for sure, are under state management now, as well. So, while some inward-focused Jefferson County folks think they are being singled out, that isn’t the real history.
The key right now is both the new superintendent and the relatively newly elected local board have not been on the job very long, and the superintendent at least has shown promise. But, there is a long history of promises unfulfilled in Jefferson County, and the best interests of students require more extensive oversight than basically just providing advisory service. This way, if things don’t work well, there won’t be a big delay before those currently managing day-to-day operations can be replaced.
I was born in Louisville, and educated at Kentucky public schools. I hope that the problems can be solved, without a state takeover. The history of school systems being seized by the states is not a pleasant one. The states come barging into the school systems, like a camel with its hump on fire, and manage to muck things up worse.
All sides should keep in mind, that the problems in Louisville/Jefferson, and the other 119 counties of Kentucky, did not crop up overnight. This crisis is the result of years of neglect and inaction.
More like years of poverty, unaddressed
Charles, actually Kentucky tried to take action over a quarter of a century ago with passage of the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990. It was massive and radical, and it increased funding dramatically in the first five years.
But, it really hasn’t worked out very well. Lots of ideas were tried, often with the assurance that “research shows” they worked. But, they didn’t work in Kentucky.
But, saying there has been neglect and inaction isn’t correct when we talk about the Bluegrass State. The problem has been misdirection due to very poor research, and that is a very different problem.