Recharging state's education reform

The intense competition among states for $4 billion in federal education grants is forcing Kentucky to think seriously about a couple of missing links in education reform: how to improve teaching and how to turn around chronically failing schools.

That last challenge has people you'd never expect uttering thec-word: charters.

Any day now, the U.S. Department of Education will release the specifics for qualifying for the Race to the Top money authorized in the economic stimulus plan.

Help needed for survey
As part of applying for federal money, Kentucky Department of Education is surveying citizens about education. Find the survey at www.education.ky.gov/KDE.

Kentucky will have to propose stronger approaches for intervening in chronically failing schools, the "dropout factories" decried by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who says about five percent of schools fall into that category.

Kentucky law has strong language authorizing state intervention in failing schools. But the state has never put much muscle behind the words, and the legislature over the years has eliminated services and expertise aimed at helping failing schools.

Kentucky is one of the minority of states that have no charter schools and no laws authorizing them. If charter schools are a condition for qualifying for the federal money, the Obama administration should also insist that charters can't drain resources or students from struggling schools without providing quantifiably better results. Most charter schools have fallen short of that standard though some are starting to get better results.

Fixing failing schools is an extra challenge for states such as Kentucky because rural areas don't have all the options available to urban and suburban school districts: You can't very well replace an entire school staff in places that already have teacher shortages, for example, or close a bad school if the nearest alternative is 30 miles away.

None of that is a reason to give up. It's been 20 years since the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled that the children can't be deprived of an education because of where they live.

Even without the incentive of the federal money, Kentucky should be looking for ways to aggressively remake chronically failing schools — and worry later about what to call it.

The quality of teaching in Kentucky should also get a needed boost from the competition for federal dollars. Among the requirements are two political hot potatoes that can no longer be avoided: tying teacher evaluations to student performance and using teacher evaluations to judge teacher-training programs.