Prologue

"Never doubt that a small group of committed people can 
change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
--Margaret Mead, anthropologist

One Principal’s Voice

On November 10, 1989, at a meeting of the Council for Better Education in Frankfort, former Kentucky Governor and Federal Judge, Bert Combs suggested that a formal chronology documenting the events surrounding the Council’s lawsuit against the legislature would be important historically.  In a sense, this is what I have attempted to do.  I must confess that I loved this story from the start.  As I saw it, there were a handful of school administrators who thought they could make things better for the children in Kentucky.  Some worked at the state level, some at the local level, but they shared a mission: To be good stewards of the common school ideal.  
But, the way this kind of story tends to go in Kentucky is - maybe they go to Frankfort and get some good done, but more likely, they try and fail.  They fight a good fight and return home to work for their kids.  I liked the idea of the little guys standing up to right a wrong that was being ignored by the more powerful.  In that sense, this is an American story.
By the time the case was heard, they were not little guys anymore.  Council members had taken their lumps along the way, but they had attracted the best legal counsel one could have hoped for, replete with a Kentucky icon.  They had expert technical assistance and the strong support of the press.  They were also the beneficiaries of an enlightened and well-supported business community.  Professional education groups and an outstanding network of local community persons, all tied together by the Prichard Committee, supported them.  The Council for Better Education had become a force to be reckoned with. 
All of this momentum arrived in Franklin Circuit Court before a judge who knew education law and more than a few things about what it meant to be a student in Kentucky.  After an initial ruling favorable to the Council, the legislature appealed to the Kentucky Supreme Court, which at the time had unmistakable activist inclinations.
Perhaps the most surprising development of all came from the defendants themselves.  Beaten in the lower court and again at the Supreme Court, the Kentucky General Assembly, despite significant kicking and screaming along the way, determined in the final analysis that the conditions were right to do some excellent work.  The result was the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA), arguably the most sweeping educational reform package in American history.
To play some small role in documenting and analyzing this momentous accomplishment is reason enough to take pride in the work.  While all of this was going on, I was on the sidelines: a practicing school administrator, an observer of the process, and one who stood to be significantly affected.  To then become a researcher, required me to challenge my own assumptions and verify my own understandings through an appropriately rigorous academic process.  To do less would undermine any analysis that would follow.  Perhaps a researcher without connections to public schooling could do as much.  My advantage is that being involved in Kentucky public school education over a long time, and especially during this period of great transition, helped my understanding of the significance of the events and their ultimate impact at the individual school level – where the children are.  After all, it is only at that level where any of this matters.  
After thirty years of service in Kentucky’s public schools I have witnessed a few swings of the pendulum and developed some opinions about the importance of educating all of our community’s children - in all their varieties.  But, they are informed opinions.  Since I cannot change my circumstances and I have decided to write on the subject, it is best that the reader is aware of who is writing.
I am the middle son of an expert real estate appraiser (father) who was serious about the notion that in our country the only way to participate was to speak up.  Otherwise, you have no voice.  He served briefly in the Kentucky General Assembly in the 1950s.  My mother was a long time school Secretary and Treasurer to the Ludlow Board of Education and a significant player among the men who ran our schools.  
I was initially educated in the small northern Kentucky, Ludlow Independent School District, graduating as Boy of the Year, in 1969.  A small Ohio River town of modest single-family homes, Ludlowites numbered about 6,200 homogenous Caucasians. Our diversity was Protestant and Catholic.  I think the shoe repairman was Jewish, but he lived out of town.  We were also within the grasp of a major Midwestern city and its media.  We did not grow up with a Southern identity.  Ludlow school children visited the tight, dark quarters below Mrs. Thomas’s Candy Factory where part of the Underground Railroad once operated, within sight of the Mason-Dixon Line.  A short walk across the Ohio River on the Southern Railroad Bridge brought us to Crosley Field, where the Cincinnati Red Legs played - in the days of my youth.  I was comfortable in a loving home, basking in white privilege, in small town America, in the middle of the 20th century.
I graduated the University of Kentucky in 1973.  I had been active on campus serving a term as President of the Student Center Board, was active in Sigma Nu Fraternity, and left with a degree in elementary education and the Sullivan Medallion under my arm.  I taught five years at R. C. Hinsdale Elementary School under the tutelage of veteran principal, Mildred Tupman.  Mrs. Tupman was chosen to open this new school, in Edgewood, under the Individually Guided Education model (complete with open classrooms) that had gained some popularity in the late 1960s.  The pedagogical philosophy was very similar to the KERA Primary Program that came 20 years later.  Both advocated a progressive, child-centered approach focused on the achievement of each child - but in 1973 we tested less.  
A Master’s degree from the Xavier University in 1976 brought with it certification for administrative work.  I was named Elementary Supervisor for the Kenton County Public Schools, started the county’s first program for gifted children, and later became Principal of Ryland Elementary School.  I became very active with the Kentucky Jaycees and played a supportive role in the admission of women in the early ‘80s.  In 1985, failing in my attempt to gain an appointment to the White House Fellowship Program, I accepted a principalship at Meadowthorpe Elementary in Fayette County and, in 1989, Cassidy School.  I serve on the Fayette County Equity Council and received the Kentucky PTA’s Outstanding Educator Award for 2002. 
As principal of Cassidy School, I have found myself uniquely situated to observe KERA’s implementation, and unfortunately the achievement gap, first-hand.  Cassidy is part of the Fayette County Public School District - the district against which all others were equalized under KERA.  Founded in 1935, the school enjoyed a long history as a popular and somewhat progressive school in the affluent Lexington neighborhood of Chevy Chase.  Student test scores typically measured from the 60th to the 75th percentiles on the nationally normed Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills.  Cassidy was commonly said to be a “good school” particularly attractive to the suburban white parents to whom it catered.  Under the higher standards described in the Rose opinion, however, disaggregated student data revealed that not all groups of Cassidy students were performing at high levels.  Among elementary schools in Kentucky, Cassidy had the largest gap in Black/White test scores at the turn of the new century.   This, despite Cassidy’s veteran faculty, the kind advocated for children of color.  By 2002, the percentage of low SES children grew to 31.8%, but neither the passage of Senate Bill 168 nor the full commitment of the Kentucky Department of Education to eradicate the achievement gap brought a penny of assistance to the approximately 140 low-income children who were said to be “in the gap.”  
I talk about race in this work.  In fact, it was a conscious decision on my part to choose that issue upon which to educate myself and, hopefully, improve as a person.  I decided to seek an appreciation of other cultures and to try not to judge the value of a society by its level of technology and adherence to western values.  I began to look for and notice that other cultures had much to offer my own life. Unbeknown to myself, I was becoming a postmodernist.
It is significant that I have spent my entire career in Kentucky.  Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Rose v. Council and the passage of the KERA, Kentucky has been the focus of tremendous national attention.  Along the way, I experienced the shift toward a more open and participatory form of school administration.  The short story is that I have spent a 30-year career in Kentucky that includes district and school level instructional leadership before KERA, during its difficult implementation, and during its present reexamination under the higher mission of assuring a proficient education for each and every child. 
This dissertation has been a long journey for me.  I completed my qualifying exams in April 1990, slightly less than a year after the decision in Rose v. Council and just after the signing of House Bill 940, The Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA).  My first Qualifying Exam question, in 1990, asked me to gauge the impact of the Rose case.  To some degree, I have been trying to answer that question ever since. 

I had moved, in 1985, from suburban northern Kentucky to what was the state’s flagship district - Fayette County.  I have had a unique set of experiences to accompany my journey through KERA’s implementation.  I witnessed a deadly natural gas explosion at Simon Kenton High School.  A teacher at one of my schools made national news when she was arrested for prostitution.  I have seen children grow to graduate and lead successful lives.  I have seen them go to jail and I have seen them die.  I have been amazed by brilliant teachers, dismayed by impassive bureaucrats, disappointed by politicians and uplifted by some of Kentucky’s finest school children.   When I am not complaining about it, I will attest that public school administration is critically important work.
Along with KERA and the standards-based movement came a new pedagogical paradigm for schooling in Kentucky.  The philosophical position shifted from one of equality of educational opportunity to one of equality of educational outcomes.  We all knew that this was going to take some time and the implementation required much from those on the front line.  In the early years there was an assessment, but no clear curriculum.  School councils went from being a trendy idea among progressive schools to a required governing body with tangible legal authority parallel to that of the local boards of education, albeit on a smaller scale.  The basic organizational structure of every primary classroom was initially altered, only to fade under the weight of poor implementation and insufficient professional development.  School principals were called upon to implement a considerable amount of change.  In many cases, the change began with the principal’s own leadership style, as school-based decision making councils effectively eliminated the old-style autocrat.  
The increased demands on school leadership turned the Kentucky principalship into a rather all-consuming job.  This, along with some personal choices I made at the time, caused me to lose contact with my studies.  But by that time, I had gathered most of my primary source data and had written part of what was to have been my dissertation.
It was about twelve years and one false start later that I decided to try again.  I had thirteen original interviews with the main actors in the Council for Better Education effort along with boxes of primary source data in the form of Council for Better Education documents and records.  In addition, Bill McCann Jr. had collected numerous interviews for the University of Kentucky archives but had not written on the subject.  The data are important for our state.  I wanted to tell the story of this group of local school Superintendents who defied the system and led us to Kentucky’s first real effort to educate all of its children. 
So what do I have to offer after all this time and experience?  I have a voice.  I have one Principal’s voice.  I can use it or not.  It is my choice.  While there is a certain amount of organizational encouragement to keep one’s opinion’s to oneself, there is an equally strong belief in the freedom of speech.  It is this one fact that makes a critical assessment of our public institutions ‘from within’ possible.  The more common voices of politicians, pundits and upper level administrators are valuable, but certainly not to the exclusion of those actually implementing the programs and teaching the children at the building level.  The challenge for the practitioner, one I have accepted here, is to test one’s theories against the rigors of scholarship.  Academic analysis sharpens personal reflection.  Professional experiences reveal the possibilities that lie within research and launch new areas of inquiry.
Is my opinion biased?  Certainly.  It’s a practitioner’s bias.  It comes from witnessing three decades of promises about new math, multi-aged classrooms and “can’t miss” reading programs.  Madeline Hunter promised that if every teacher would do what great teachers do, they would all be great.  Ron Edmonds told us basically the same thing about building effective schools.  The Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISSLC) standards also suggest that Principals are made great by the demonstration of certain skills, described as indicators on a set of standards.  Kentucky Superintendent for Public Instruction, Alice McDonald, reduced our focus to how much time students were spending on tasks.  And, Kentucky’s first Education Commissioner, Thomas Boysen, frequently explained the rocky implementation of KERA with the metaphor that we were ‘building the airplane while we flew it.’  All of this, against the backdrop of Kentucky’s historically modest support for its schools, has left me skeptical of many claims.  But along the way I have been honored to work with hundreds of dedicated public servants that selflessly chose to teach children, when they could have chosen more lucrative careers.  I have seen much good being done for many children – but for some more than others.
As a landmark case, Rose v. Council for Better Education has drawn widespread attention and has been cited in dozens of cases and hundreds of articles.  This manuscript is intended to be a broader survey of the subject based primarily on the original documents of the Council for Better Education.  In that sense, it differs from the more common form - a narrowly focused dissertation.
Three particular areas of inquiry deserve more treatment than they receive in this manuscript.  Those are Kentucky’s political culture, the policy change process and the mathematical aspects of school finance.  The choice to limit my inquiry into these areas is largely a response to two previous dissertations on the subject.  Dr. Woody Barwick, who worked with Dr. David Alexander and Richard Salmon, and who by 1993 was a local Superintendent and member of the Council for Better Education Board of Directors, effectively covered school finance issues in his dissertation.  I would not attempt to improve upon Dr. Steve Clements’ work on political culture, the policy creation process and its implications, not only for the legal challenge, but also to the development of the Kentucky Education Reform Act.  I agree generally with his conclusion that KERA does not represent a shift toward a more individualistic political culture in Kentucky.  Rather, it represents a political culture that continues to be essentially traditionalistic.
Paul Sabatier suggests that it is helpful to view policy advocacy in periods of a decade or more.  While it was not my initial intention to structure my study in that fashion, it has proven very helpful in providing perspective to my understandings.  Viewing the Council for Better Education, the Prichard Committee and other actors from this perspective allows for a clearer view of some of the results of that initial effort and the ability to relate those results to the current challenges in public education.  It becomes possible to see how coalitions maintain their core beliefs against changing circumstances.  
Some believe schools cannot overcome the disparities present in the larger community.  I assume they believe it for at least two reasons.  First, that’s about all school folks have told the public for decades.  Second, the disparities are real and the effects of poverty on school children are profound.  I remember looking into Sally Vest’s primary classroom last year and observing a “free lunch student” who was working diligently.  His reading was about two years behind what we would hope for a seven-year old.  He was able to get some extra assistance and he was starting to catch up.  In the next seat was a boy who read Scientific American, for fun.  The gap is real - and it was Sally’s job to make it go away.

Schools can make a significant difference in the lives of their students.  As schools begin to intentionally focus on the success of African-American and low-income students those students begin to improve.  Changes in a school’s culture will also produce needed benefits for children.  But schools do not control all of the variables, and changes in school culture alone are not likely to satisfy the promise of a world-class education for each and every child while our funding remains below the national average.  To promise the public that schools can fix long-standing problems of poverty and race without additional resources is irresponsible.  On the other hand, if it is to be done, the best chance surely lies in a well-supported system of common schools that is intentionally focused on the results we expect.
Much is at stake in Kentucky.  The years of effort required to secure the historic Supreme Court decision pale in comparison to the time and effort needed to convert our lofty aspirations into reality.  I believe there is a place for the voice of a Principal in this discussion.  As Bert Combs understood, implementation of KERA was critical to the Commonwealth and Kentucky’s Principals will be “vitally important.”    
Unless we do implement it…and implement it properly, Kentucky will not only be back where we were - we will be below where we were.  Because we will have proved that we’re too ignorant to help ourselves, even when we try.