KERA Comes Home

According to the Lexington Herald-Leader lead-editorial of 22 July, the "big whoosh you hear is the air rushing out of education reform." The editorialist then went on to condemn the current administration for much of the trouble, even though Governor Fletcher had nothing to do with the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990, which has proven to be the penultimate vacuum, never having contained any "air" from the beginning that could now "whoosh." Largely a pork-barrel project damned by political perverseness in promulgating pernicious pedagogy, the Act was a curse from the beginning, based on the "outcomes education" concept, the quintessential goal being self-esteem, the be-all and end-all of education endeavor, with ignorance no hindrance to one's being "somebody."

Legislatures since the 90s have slowly discombobulated the Act, getting rid of such features as "reward money" for teachers already being paid to do their best. The teachers and administrators in many districts just falsified the records, copped the cash and felt no pain. The legislators decided in 1990 to combine kindergarten through 3^rd-grade with the silly notion, apparently, that the third-graders could help the 5-year-olds learn. As a result, reading scores plummeted and teachers simply violated this silliness well before that part of the Act was – yep – un-legislated. Only 60% of fourth-graders read at grade level now. Imagine all those decades in the attempt to get rid of all one-room schools, and then having legislators reintroduce them! Go figure.

The paper was tough on the governor, but this is what one of the enactors of KERA, Walter Baker, was quoted as saying: "We've lost the kind of commitment and determination we had in 1990 with KERA and in 1997 with House Bill 1" (higher education legislation). Neither commitment nor determination has been a factor, since trying to support or advance the unsupportable always predisposes toward failure. The entire Act, especially the feature called "School-based or Site-based Council," should have been consigned to the trash-heap long ago.

KERA was demonstrably flawed from the beginning, a monster created as the result of primarily east-Kentucky school districts screaming for more state money in light of their being unwilling to do what other districts did – secure additional local funding. As a result – when the boondoggles were handed out – the districts whose citizens had cared enough to ante-up extra cash to have excellent systems were given the back of the state's financial hand, while millions went to other districts, with the result that education in much of east-Kentucky (allowing for the individual cream that always rises to the top) remains woefully bad, among the worst in the state, if not the nation. The tests prove this in spades. Adding buildings does not an education-system make.

The educational downward spiral has been in effect ever since the 90s, during the early part of which a gaggle of lawmakers (pedagogical geniuses?), including the House Speaker, were trucked off to jail. Except for the last three years, a democrat has been governor since 1971, and the House has been held by democrats forever. Blaming Governor Fletcher for any education problem is blowing smoke in billows sufficient to envelop the whole state in intense smog. The problem is the system, and until the entire philosophy of education has been changed, the problem will get worse, no matter who the governor is.

As it is, local superintendents are little more than overpaid bean-counters, without even the power to hire their own principals or install a standardized curriculum, i.e., if anyone remembers what that term means. Many, if not most, school-board positions are uncontested because local boards can do little more than hire a superintendent occasionally, a measure of their impotence, while absorbing blame from all sides for problems they can't fix. The KEA has one of the most powerful lobbies in the state and thus has a hammer-lock on everything…a recipe for disaster, since vested interests usually deep-six any endeavor.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark