Richmond Register, Sept. 3, 2012
County high schools establish ‘AP cohort’ with freshman class
By Crystal Wylie
RICHMOND — Beginning this year, entering freshmen at Madison Southern and Madison Central high schools will have the opportunity to participate in a rigorous Advanced Placement curriculum that has the potential to earn them nearly 30 college hours by the time they graduate, said David Gilliam, principal at Madison Southern.
“If this group of freshmen commit to taking the AP courses, we will commit to providing them,” Gilliam said.
Twenty students from Southern and 55 students from Central were accepted into the AP cohort. The selected students met certain benchmarks on standardized tests and completed an application process which began this summer.
Although several AP courses have always been offered at both schools, Gilliam and Madison Central Principal Elmer Thomas, put their heads together to come up with a plan to ensure the course-offering would be consistent every year.
A certain number of teachers need to be certified to teach AP courses and scheduling flexibility options had to be considered if enough students were interested in committing to the program, Gilliam said.
“We want to encourage our top-level students,” he said. “We realized one of the barriers for these students was the fluctuation of course offerings and the encouragement and support they need to continue through.”
An option for accommodating AP students’ loaded schedules could be to offer a health/physical education class during the summer to meet state requirements, while allowing students to maximize their AP schedule during the school year, Thomas said.
If a class could not be filled by students from one high school, another option would be to combine students from both schools who are interested in a certain subject, Gilliam said.
The program also has “on and off ramps,” he said, giving students an opportunity to leave the program if it gets too hard or to join if they did not previously qualify.
The district will incur no additional costs from the program, Gilliam said, because several teachers already are qualified to teach AP courses and students are to pay the $85 fee for each test. A discounted test fee is offered to students who qualify for free or reduced lunch.
Although a few teachers were required to gain AP certification, the cost was covered by a federal grant, he said.
Madison Central’s AP cohort will begin with a set of prescribed courses their freshman year but can branch out in focus areas once they become sophomores, Thomas said.
Thomas equates the process to “picking a major in college,” he said, where upon graduation, they will receive a diploma indicating an AP “degree” in either Science/ Math, Social Sciences, Arts/Humanities or General Studies.
The select group of students will move through high school together, taking many of the same courses, Thomas said, creating “a sort of academy within the school.”
Currently, the AP courses offered are Human Geography, World History, European History, English Language, Chemistry, Calculus, Statistics, Physics, English Literature, Spanish, French, Latin, U.S. History, Music Theory and in the future, Physics and Psychology, Thomas said.
“Because development of the program is in its early stages, both principals have been calling it “The AP Cohort,” Thomas said. “But we’ve challenged our students to come up with a name for it. We need to call them something — maybe get some T-shirts.”
Paducah Sun, Sept. 2, 2012
Marshall elementaries erase letter grading system
by JODY NORWOOD
Parents and students at all six public elementary schools in Marshall County may find an unfamiliar look to report cards this year as the district moves away from traditional letter grades.
After piloting a standards-based grading system at Central Elementary School in Draffenville last year, the approach has moved district-wide. Abby Griffy, instructional supervisor for Marshall County Schools, said all the county’s elementary schools will assess student performance by describing levels of comprehension on what is being taught instead of assigning letters based on averaged grades.
“We are not averaging grades anymore,” Griffy said. “We use formative assessment until they complete their learning. We don’t do averages and percentage grades. The letter grades meant lots of different things to different people.”
With the new approach, Griffy said, mistakes made early in learning are not counted against students who are later able to demonstrate acceptable levels of understanding the material. Instead of averaging individual scores for homework and tests, students receive a comprehensive designation of Exceeds Mastery, Mastery, Partial Mastery or Non-Mastery.
The new system also removes process grades, such as getting planners signed by parents, which can skew grades to give inflated or deflated reflections on learning, Griffy said.
Parents at Central learned of the changes last year. Griffy said the pilot program succeeded, allowing teachers to correct student mistakes earlier. This year, as Benton, Calvert City, Jonathan, Sharpe and South Marshall elementary schools begin the first phase of the new reporting system, Central students will receive reports on specific standards for math and reading.
Tina Belt’s twin sons, Davin and Dylan, attended Central last year. Belt said she did not like the change.
“We never knew if they understood what was being taught to them,” Belt said. “We were afraid it would even hurt our kids this year with not counting homework, plus the second chance to do everything over.”
According to Griffy, the new grading system also fits into requirements of Kentucky Senate Bill 1 to show student assessment.
Mountain Advocate, Barbourville, Aug. 30, 2012
Knox BOE votes to freeze job opening
By Casey Tolliver
Knox County’s top employer has put any potential hiring in the near future on ice.
Members of the Knox County Board of Education voted at their monthly meeting on Tuesday to put a freeze on current job openings district-wide.
“The board is closely watching all expenditures to make sure funds are wisely spent,” Knox County Public Schools Public Relations Director Frank Shelton said. “During the past several years, we have delegated responsibilities and abolished positions upon retirement of all positions that are not vital to our mission of educating students. The freeze will not impact positions that are essential for us to provide required student services.”
All staff and faculty positions currently available were affected by the freeze.
The issue divided the usually synonymous board, as members Carla Jordan and Sam Watts voted against the freeze because they felt the board was overstepping its bounds.
“I feel like that the people who do the hiring are the ones who know if that position needs to be filled or not and the board doesn’t need to be piddling in that kind of stuff. The decision needs to be left to the district people,” Jordan said.
Watts said he felt it was not up to the board to micromanage such day-to-day operations within the district.
“Well, I think we should leave that up to the district principals and superintendent, whether or not they need somebody or not,” Watts said.
Despite their opposition, the freeze was enacted by a 3-2 vote.
Board members also voted to abolish a parts manager position in the district’s transportation department, effective June 30.
Jordan and Watts again proved to be the divisive votes, with the measure passing by a 3-2 margin.
Also at the meeting, the board voted to set the district’s tax rates. Board members voted unanimously to slightly raise the rate on real estate and personal property from 46.5 to 46.3.
News-Graphic, Georgetown, Sept. 1, 2012
Parents still upset about school-bus incident
By Dan Adkins
The parents of a fourth-grade student who was not let off at her bus stop last Friday say they remain unsatisfied with Scott County School District administrators’ response to the situation.
In particular, Mike and Sheila Caudill are upset that district officials will not show them a video from an on-bus camera that recorded the incident.
“They will not allow us to see the video,” Mrs. Caudill said Wednesday.
The incident began last Friday when Anne Mason Elementary student McKenzie Caudill missed her stop on a bus driven by a substitute driver.
On Monday, Superintendent Patricia Putty said she had reviewed the video several times and decided that the driver should not be subjected to disciplinary action.
And on Wednesday, she confirmed refusing to permit the Caudills to review the video.
“On advice from legal counsel, any video that shows multiple students is considered a student record,” Putty said.
Under federal law, that means the video must be regarded as confidential, she said.
School board attorney Robert Chenoweth said the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office, as well as the U.S. Department of Education, have issued several rulings that protect students’ privacy in videos.
“A (school-related) video is not accessible to anyone, short of a court order,” Chenoweth said.
Part of the dispute revolves around whether McKenzie did enough to alert the driver when he arrived at her stop.
On Monday, Putty said the video shows students verbally telling the driver when he reached their bus stop. She said McKenzie raised her hand but did not speak out.
But the Caudills said McKenzie complied with the Anne Mason Elementary student handbook, which tells students not to be loud and boisterous on buses so drivers don’t get distracted.
Caudill said McKenzie was frightened by the incident.
Caudill said he and his wife have spoken to lawyers but have been informed they don’t have a case.
“Nobody’s being held accountable for what they did to my daughter,” he said.
Messenger-Inquirer, Owensboro, Sept. 3, 2012
Juvenile Justice task force's work not finished
Group says issues remain, plans to stay in business into 2014
By James Mayse
The state task force examining the state's juvenile criminal laws and procedures was formed with the expectation that the task force would be ready to propose changes to the Kentucky General Assembly by the time legislators reconvened in Frankfort for the 2013 short session in January.
The task force will make recommendations for the upcoming legislative session — but the co-chairman of the task force said there is so much work to be done that the task force will likely extend its work beyond next year's short session, with the goal of making additional recommendations in 2014.
The task force consists of legislators, judges, education officials, public defenders, the commissioner of the Department of Juvenile Justice and representatives from state agencies that provide services to children and families, such as the Department of Community Based Services. Some of the task force's goals include increasing services to children in need before they are transferred to the court system and finding ways to reduce the number of juveniles being incarcerated in detention facilities — particularly "status offenders."
A "status offense" is a charge that can only be leveled at a person under the age of 18. Common status offenses include running away from home, being truant from school, being out of control of parents and possession of tobacco products.
Rep. John Tilley, a Hopkinsville Democrat and co-chairman of the task force, said how the state handles status offenders will likely be the dominant issue before the task force this year. Although the creation of the task force was approved by legislators earlier this year, the work was delayed when House and Senate members on the Legislative Research Committee failed to approve an agenda that contained several items, which included approving the task force members.
The LRC agenda was caught in a dispute among legislators over who would pay attorney fees for the lawyer who represented the General Assembly in the winter battle over redistricting. The agenda was approved in late June after legislators reached a compromise on the legal fees.
"We were compromised by the lack of our task force being ratified," Tilley said last week. "We were pushed 35 to 40 days behind.
"We don't want to rush anything through" by not devoting enough time to any particular issue, Tilley said. Instead of trying to make recommendations on the entire juvenile code, the goal for this year is to give the General Assembly options on how the state can better handle status offenders.
"The status offender issue is one that screams out to us," Tilley said. "It seems no matter who comes to the table, there has been little disagreement that there needs to be some solution other than sending kids to the court system."
Studies have indicated sending a juvenile to a detention facility does nothing to prevent future offenses. According to an October report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, sending a juvenile to secure detention almost guarantees that the child will later be arrested for a new offense.
The report cites a 2009 study by the New York State Office of Children and Family Services that found "89 percent of boys and 81 percent of girls released from state juvenile corrections institutions in the early 1990s were arrested as adults by age 28."
The Annie E. Casey report also cites a Canadian study that followed a group of children from kindergarten to age 25 and found "youth incarcerated as juveniles were 38 times as likely as youth with equivalent backgrounds and self-reported offending histories to be sanctioned for crimes they committed as adults."
Juveniles in detention also face the risk of physical and sexual assault, either by detention center staff or other inmates. A 2010 survey by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics found that 10.3 percent of 9,198 juveniles who had been incarcerated in detention facilities across the country had been sexually assaulted in detention. Children sent to detention were also two to four times more likely to commit suicide than their peers, a 2006 study by the Justice Policy Institute found.
Status offenders can be placed in detention either while awaiting a court hearing or for violating a judge's order to attend school or obey parents. Such court orders are often open-ended, so a 16-year-old status offender could be jailed for violating a court order issued when he was 13.
"It's one of those things that when you talk about (status offenders), you have to remind the public what we're talking about," Tilley said. "We're talking about noncriminal offenses.
"There are a number of concerns under the juvenile code that we're certainly not ignoring, but coming up on a short (legislative) session, we don't want to get too spread out," Tilley said. "My co-chair (Sen. Katie Stine) and I have stated publicly we'd like to reauthorize" the task force for 2013.
With other issues expected to cause debate during the 2013 session, Tilley said the plan is just to present recommendations on status offenders during that session.
"We are facing a contentious session, with pension reform (and) redistricting," Tilley said. "We want to be realistic and don't want to sink the effort by tackling too broad a piece of reform."
With status offenders, "I'd like to get out front on that issue" in the 2013 legislative session, Tilley said.
Daviess District Court Judge Lisa Payne Jones, a member of the task force, said the two meetings have addressed a variety of topics, from what services are available to juveniles to how attorneys should represent juveniles in court.
"Of course no one wants to incarcerate status offenders ... so (task force members) have talked about the importance of front-loading services" to juveniles, Jones said.
"It seems to be the direction the panel is going is ... we want to get status offenders out" of detention, and determine how juvenile services can be extended across the state, she said.
At the task force's last meeting on Aug. 23, Teresa James, commissioner for the Department of Community Based Services, said her agency would be the most appropriate agency for extending services to juveniles, Jones said. Creating additional juvenile services, however will require funding DCBS does not have, she said.
"To start that process, we need an influx of funds to get those front-end services," Jones said.
How juveniles think has also been part of the discussion. Brain research has shown that the brain is not developmentally mature until a person is in his 20s.
Juveniles are more likely to engage in risky behavior and are less likely to understand long-term consequences than adults, brain researchers have found.
Jones said having developmentally immature brains affects how defense attorneys represent juveniles; traditionally, a defense attorney is expected to follow the wishes of the client.