Education reform is a work in progress
From Issue 3, January 2006
For the past 15 years, Kentuckians have expected big things from
educational reform. School curricula have grown to include
larger quantities of information and more rigorous material. And now
all children must master the content, a requirement of the No Child Left Behind Act.(1)
According to Nancy Laprade, president of the Pawleys Group, “We will not
be able to create, grow, or attract ... businesses if we do not have the
intellectual capital to make them competitive.”(2)
Researchers presenting national evidence at a symposium at Columbia
University in October 2005 reported that unless the inadequate schooling
received by many American students is vastly improved, future
health-care, crime, and welfare costs could be ruinous for our nation.
Researchers found that lower earnings among dropouts could cost the
United States about $158 billion in lost earnings and $36 billion in
lost state and federal income taxes for each class of 18-year-olds, an
amount which totals a loss of about 1.6 percent of the gross domestic
product each year.(3) Most
agree that education reforms are necessary to guarantee a good education
for our children and to create an adequate future workforce. This
research reminds us that educational reform is a work in progress
requiring constant attention and revision.
Possible Implications for Kentucky: The National
Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) mathematics and reading assessments are valuable tools to check the
progress of educational reform. Kentucky students have shown considerable progress over the last decade in
NAEP achievement scores, increasing at the 4th- and 8th-grade levels in both math and
reading proficiency.(4) The National Assessment Governing Board defines
proficient as “solid academic performance.”  Students
reaching this level have demonstrated competency over
challenging subject matter, including subject-matter knowledge, application of such knowledge to real-world
situations, and analytical skills appropriate to the subject matter.(5)
In 2003,
all 50 states participated in that testing for the first time as part of the federal No Child Left Behind Act
requirements. For the first time, Kentucky’s 4th and 8th graders surpassed the national average in reading and
Kentucky fared well when compared to southern states, leading Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi,
North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee in the percentage of 8th-grade students at or above the
proficient level in reading. Though the percentage of Kentucky’s students at or above the proficient level in
math has increased, from 13 to 26 percent for 4th graders and from 10 to 23 percent for 8th graders, there is
still much work to be done since we lag the national averages by several percentage points (see table).
Contributing Writer
Billie S. Dunavent
Sources:
1
Mary Kennedy, “How Classroom Life Undermines
Reform,” Book Review, Teacher Magazine, September 1, 2005, 9
September 2005
http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2005/09/01/01books-1.h17.html?print=1.
2 Nancy Laprade, “The Competitive Edge: Creating a
Human Capital Advantage for Kentucky,” Foresight No. 44, 2005,
Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center, 20 December 2005
http://www.kltprc.net/foresight/no44.pdf.
3 Alan Richard, “Researchers Tally Costs of Education
Failings,” Education Week, November 2, 2005, Vol. 25 Issue 10,
pages 6-7, 21 December 2005
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2005/.
4 Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center,
Visioning Kentucky’s Future: Measures and Milestones 2004
(Frankfort: Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center, 2004), 21
December 2005 http://www.kltprc.net/books/2004/2004trends.pdf.
5 Natl. Center for Education Statistics, Glossary, 22
December 2005 http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/. |
