AGENDA: Build an educated and skilled workforce that can compete and prevail in the knowledge economy.

In-Depth: Fix the Basics 1

Louisville’s commitment to public education, coupled with Kentucky’s pioneering program of education reform, has produced a strong and stable public school system and a record of steady improvement in recent years.

Beyond Merger underscored the urgency of escalating that trend and particularly of closing the achievement gap for all students. It identified higher educational achievement as the single most important challenge confronting Louisville Metro and urged the community to “make itself a national leader in producing high levels of achievement among all students.”

The challenge to “Fix the Basics” was quickly embraced by both the community’s civic leadership and the Jefferson County Public Schools. Brought together by Greater Louisville Inc., they devised Every1Reads, one of the most ambitious community-wide education improvement efforts in the nation.Reading ability is the foundation of academic success. But, as the accompanying map demonstrates, the level of achievement in that basic skill varies widely across the community, primarily because of the deep impact that poverty and other circumstances of family distress can have on children’s learning.

Eliminating such disparities, as Beyond Merger said, “will require a comprehensive commitment that cuts across all other agendas and institutional boundaries…to make educational achievement the top priority of every family and neighborhood.”

Every1Reads reflects just such a commitment, going beyond the schoolhouse to mobilize the community for change. By combining major changes in the expectations and practices of public school educators with major donations of time, money, and effort by hundreds of citizen volunteers, the initiative’s goal is to ensure that, by the end of four years, and for the first time ever, every child in Louisville’s public schools will be reading at least on grade level.

Achieving that goal will distinguish Louisville among major urban areas across the nation. Valid comparisons among cities on the quality of public education are difficult to make because of variations in education policy and testing measures. One standardized test that reports achievement compared to national norms produces a mixed picture for the Jefferson County Public Schools. As Indicator #2 shows, in 2004 local elementary students outperformed 56 percent of their national peers in reading, while high school students outperformed just over half of the national test group on the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills (CTBS). Louisville Metro’s middle school students scored lower, outperforming only 46 percent of the national group.

On Kentucky’s more extensive CATS tests, JCPS students and schools have shown steady improvement, although math scores have risen more slowly than reading scores, and wide gaps still exist between the highest and lowest scoring schools, as well as among student groups, particularly African-Americans, other racial minorities, and children with learning differences.

On a key indicator that national research shows may play an important role in learning for minority children and those from poorer households, the Jefferson County Public Schools have lost some ground. The national recommendation for student-teacher ratios in elementary schools is 15 students for each teacher. As Indicator #4 shows, over the last three years, that ratio rose in JCPS schools to reach an average of 17.3 students per teacher.

The drop-out rate from Jefferson County high schools moved up and down over the last decade and has declined for four years, as the graph for Indicator #5 shows. Among collegebound high school students, Jefferson County Public Schools’ average scores on the ACT test closely track the national averages for both white and African-American students, as Indicator #6 shows.

Bottom Line
The Top Priorities Are: Education, Education, Education