School reform on a shoestring: State asking much, giving little | Lexington Herald Leader

As public schools edge closer to what's being called a "funding cliff," Kentucky educators are trying to carry out major new reforms on the cheap.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has dubbed this "the new normal."

Duncan's entreaty to do more with less may be meant to inspire. But cash on the barrel head would come in handier, as Kentucky rolls out ambitious learning standards and builds a new assessment and accountability system.

This process of implementing 2009's Senate Bill 1 was once envisioned as part of a $175 million strategy melding state-of-the-art teacher development with the development of curriculum and new testing.

The legislature put up almost no money to pay for the changes required by SB 1, however. (Can you say "unfunded mandate?")

The hope was that Kentucky would be a winner in the Obama administration's competition for funding innovations in education.

Alas, Kentucky did not win. So, the reforms are being prepared for launch with the equivalent of baling twine and chewing gum.

Education Commissioner Terry Holliday has valiantly rearranged his shrunken budget to focus the Department of Education almost exclusively on meeting SB 1's deadlines. Local districts also are reallocating funds and seeking money from foundations to bring their teachers up to speed.

Teachers must begin teaching to the higher, deeper standards in math, reading and language arts by August. Standards in other subjects take effect later. The first round of testing under the new standards will be in the spring of 2012. The state is in the process of bidding out testing contracts amid hopes that there's enough money to cover the costs.

Also by next August, the hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid that is propping up school budgets will have ended. Thus, the "funding cliff" looms with dim hopes of a big turnaround in state revenues by then.

From Frankfort, we hear a lot about how school funding has been shielded from the $1 billion in cuts to state government. Protecting education from the Republican Senate's budget ax was a priority for Democrats in the wrangling over how to fill the Medicaid hole, and the Democrats appear to have finagled a victory.

But the truth is, schools have been cut. Faulty enrollment projections produced a 2 percent or almost $50 million shortfall in SEEK, the basic funding formula for schools, this year. Because the 2 percent adjustment is imposed across the board, it falls heaviest on poorer school districts because they rely more on state funding than do districts that have richer property tax bases.

Aside from SEEK, in the last two years, preschool has been cut by $3.3 million, education technology by $2.3 million, family resource and youth services centers by $3 million, early reading by $3.8 million, textbooks by $21 million or a whopping 97 percent, and the list goes on.

Higher education has suffered an even deeper loss of state support and is facing its own funding woes when temporary federal funding expires.

Our hats are off to all the Kentucky educators who are scrambling, on a shoestring, to implement challenging reforms.

The new standards, adopted by 41 states and the District of Columbia, have the potential to make Kentucky's youth much better prepared for the world that awaits them.

We fear, though, that unless the state's economy perks up dramatically or, more unlikely, lawmakers decide to raise taxes, schools will slide down that funding cliff.

If that happens, we can only hope the "new normal" won't take us right back to the "old normal" when Kentucky education was looking up from the bottom of every list.