By GINA KINSLOW
HORSE CAVE — The Caverna Independent School District was the first among 12 school districts Terry Holliday, state education commissioner, will be visiting in upcoming weeks that were identified as “persisentently low-achieving schools.”
Holliday is taking it upon himself to personally apologize to officials with the districts. Caverna High School was included in that list, along with seven schools in the Jefferson County School System, plus Leslie County High School, Henry County High School and Metcalfe County High School.
Schools on the list have had low reading and math scores over a period of time. It was consistently low math scores that identified Caverna High School as a persistently low-achieving school.
The list of schools was inadvertently revealed during a House Education Committee meeting without school and district officials first being notified. The list, which is unofficial, was created as part of a grant application for federal stimulus dollars.
Caverna officials were angered upon hearing the news, and some people, including parents and community members, feared it meant the high school would be closing.
On Monday, Holliday met with district officials, as well as Sen. David Givens, R-Greensburg, prior to touring all three schools in the district.
During a press conference following the tour, Holliday said, “Let me make it real clear upfront. No one is coming in here to close Caverna High School down. I think you’ve got a lot of the right strategies in place here at Caverna High School. We just really regret this list of schools got published … .”
Givens addressed questions from media, along with Holliday. Both explained how the schools came to be on the list. Givens used a yardstick and a piece of paper with the word “yardstick” written on it to demonstrate his explanation.
“For years and years in the state we were measuring with the yardstick to define persistently low-achieving schools and then in the last two months we started measuring with a new yardstick (holding up the piece of paper), and unexpectedtly we found schools that didn’t know we were measuring with a new yardstick,” Givens said.
At one time persistently low-achieving schools were based on Title I funding. Schools that receive Title I funding are those that receive federal dollars based on their average daily attendance.
“The new administration, Sec. (Arne) Duncan and President Obama, they have asked to define low-achieving schools by adding to that those secondary schools that have not conditionally received Title I funds,” said Holliday.
The schools were ranked according to their overall math and reading score averages, and the schools that fell in the bottom 5 percent were identified as being eligible to receive federal stimulus grant monies over a three-year period.
The deadline for submitting the grant application was Jan. 8.
“We had to rush, and thank goodness for great Senate and House leadership and the education committee, they worked with us to really turn something around in unbelievable fashion so we could define (these schools),” he said.
As a result of appearing on the list, Caverna High School will undergo an academic audit that will enable state officials to see exactly where improvement is needed. A team composed of people from districts with similar challenges to Caverna will be brought in to conduct the audit. In addition, Caverna High School now qualifies for up to $2 million in federal stimulus grant monies to implement programs and strategies to bring up its math scores.
Holliday noted that the grant money is not part of the Race to the Top funding the state is also seeking.
“If we get Race to the Top, Caverna will have even more dollars to (use toward making improvements),” he said.
He also said the grant money won’t be pulled if Caverna High School shows improvement the first year. The key is maintaining improved math scores over a three-year period.
“Hopefully, in three years you can make some dramatic impacts on at least the math scores,” he said.
After the press conference, Lindsey said she and her staff are going to make the best of the opportunity that they possibly can and continue with the programs the school has in place to improve math scores.
“We are well aware that they are low and have never sat back and accepted it,” she said. “We have continued to seek ways to improve those. I think we’ve got some good things in place and we will see some positive things happen.”
Dick said he was pleased the district received the apology for the inadvertent release of the list of schools and thinks Holliday’s visit clarifies what actually transpired.
“One of the issues I had from the beginning was the fact we had no clue that we were on this list but we were being measured by a different standard just before December,” he said. “The actual statement ‘worst performing school or persistently low performing school,’ I guess we can debate semantics all the time ... . I still have a problem with that label being given on one score. There’s a lot more things going on than just a mathematics score. In addition to that, you also have the fact there are other schools that are Title I schools that are in worse condition than we (are), yet because of the definition of what this grant required we really narrowed that pool of schools they were looking at. I have some problems with that semantic, but we’re dealing with the government. Overall, I think it was a good meeting.”
