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                                             Oldham County Schools                                                             January 2010

                                               News and Opinion of Interest

North and South Oldham High Schools Name to U.S. & News Report Best High Schools for 2010

North Oldham and South Oldham High School were recognized in December by U.S. & News Report as Silver Award Best High Schools in the U.S.  There were no Gold Award schools in Kentucky and only eight Silver Award High Schools.

Both high schools repeated from 2009, and North Oldham was also name a Silver Award High School in 2008.

Click here to view Kentucky's Silver and Bronze High Schools.

The quality of Oldham County's schools is a key quality of life indicator for the overall county quality of life.  The Oldham County Board of Education faces financial challenges that impact teacher salaries, class sizes, and future student performance.  Superintendent of Schools Paul Upchurch addressed those challenges in a November 5 op-ed in the Oldham Era.

Challenges Face Oldham County Schools

The Oldham County Board of Education has established goals for Oldham County schools the past two years.  The District Goals and results are provided below.  The results may surprise many Oldham County citizens.

District Goals 2008-2009

District Goals 2009-2010

         

Paul Upchurch:  Continuing a Tradition of Excellence (Oldham Era, October 8, 2009)

Schools Have Action Plan to Improve CATS Scores (Courier-Journal, 30 September 2009)

Doug Wampler:  Question School District Like Any Tax Entity (Oldham Era, September 24, 2009)

District Rehires Dismissed Teachers (Courier-Journal, 2 September 2009)

Schools Maintain Tax Rate (Oldham Era, August 27, 2009)

Learning Capacity Stretched in Oldham County Schools (Oldham Era, August 27, 2009)

 

Oldham County citizens have been proud of its school system over the years for good reason.  It consistently ranks among the top performing county public school system in the state based upon norm-reference tests to include the ACT, and criterion-referenced tests i.e. the Commonwealth Accountability Tests (CATs).  There are superb teachers and administrators throughout the system.  Children can and do excel and many attend top tier colleges and universities.

The schools serve as the center of activity for the many families drawn to the county because of the reputation of the system.  They contribute to the quality of life and the stability of home values.  They are the key reason for Oldham County’s growth the past 30 years.

Citizens place a significant amount of trust in the school system and ask little in terms of oversight and accountability compared to Fiscal Court.   However, like any government agency, scrutiny and oversight are essential to ensure taxpayers are receiving the most “bang for the buck”.  Given the Board of Education is the largest taxing jurisdiction in the county—the total school assessment is over seven times that of Fiscal Court—perhaps more attention to detail is required of the Superintendent of Schools Paul Upchurch and the district’s performance.

A review of the Board of Education's Vision and Mission is instructive:

The Oldham County Board of Education Vision for Students :  “All Oldham County students supported by family, community and schools participate in relevant engaging, quality learning tasks, in safe, well designed schools, guided by highly-skilled teachers and visionary leaders. Graduates pursue a life of continuous learning, contribute to their community, participate thoughtfully in the American democracy and complete successfully in the local, national and international economy.”

Image
The mission of the Oldham County Schools is to prepare students of all ages to become lifelong learners
who are self-sufficient, responsible, and participating members of a democratic society, who function
productively in a global economy and experience the satisfaction of reaching their full potential.

 

Commentary:  If one reads the vision carefully, once can parse the 56-word vision, remove the fluff and superfluous phrases to reduce the vision to the following:  All students participate in learning tasks.  Oldham County parents and Oldham County taxpayers may expect more than this.

There are no direct references to achievement, mastery of subject matter or measurement of the knowledges and skills required at each grade level.  If a student participates in a learning task, presumably the schools and the district are successful according to the vision statement.

While the second sentence in the vision is noble, the question is simple:  how can one measure the outcome?  How does one “participate thoughtfully in the American democracy?  How does the Board of Education measure success or failure?  

This leads to the question of how well the public schools in Oldham County are performing?  Generally very well compared to other Kentucky public schools.  However, there are weaknesses.  Unfortunately, the District web site, as of December 2008 did not contain any district-wide or individual school performance data, although it has included data since then.  We have downloaded (easily available) useful data for county citizens and prospective county citizens to use and evaluate.  Below are detailed performance reports from September 2008 and No Child Left Behind Reports from October 2008.

Oldham County 2007/2008 Performance Reports and No Child Left Behind Reports

Oldham County School District   District KPR Report    District NCLB Report     
Buckner Elementary School School KPR Report School NCLB Report
Camden Station Elementary School School KPR Report School NCLB Report
Centerfield Elementary School School KPR Report School NCLB Report
Crestwood Elementary School School KPR Report School NCLB Report
East Oldham Middle School School KPR Report School NCLB Report
Goshen at Hillcrest Elementary School School KPR Report School NCLB Report
Harmony Elementary School  School KPR Report School NCLB Report
Kenwood Station Elementary School School KPR Report School NCLB Report
LaGrange Elementary School School KPR Report School NCLB Report
Liberty Elementary School School KPR Report School NCLB Report
North Oldham Middle School School KPR Report School NCLB Report
North Oldham High School School KPR Report School NCLB Report
Oldham County Middle School School KPR Report School NCLB Report
Oldham County High School School KPR Report School NCLB Report
South Oldham Middle School School KPR Report School NCLB Report
South Oldham High School School KPR Report School NCLB Report

School Report Cards
 Kentucky law (KRS 158.6453) requires that each school district and public school produce and distribute school and district report cards. School report cards are to be sent by United States mail to all parents and guardians in a school unless a waiver is granted.  Download individual Oldham County school report cards at
http://applications.kde.state.ky.us/schoolReportCardArchive/Default.aspx/

Commonwealth Accountability Testing System

The Commonwealth Accountability Testing System (CATS) is designed to improve teaching and student learning in Kentucky. CATS includes the Kentucky Core Content Test, writing portfolios and prompts, alternate assessments for students with severe to profound disabilities, the ACT, PLAN and nonacademic components.

  Download the 2008 Kentucky CATS Results

Kentucky Core Content Tests (KCCT)

The KCCT is essentially the academic component of CATS. 

The KCCT is a major component of the Commonwealth Accountability Testing System (CATS).  The results of this test are used to evaluate the school program in the state accountability system. The results from the reading and math content areas are also used to meet federal testing and reporting requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

 

The Kentucky Core Content Test is a criterion-referenced test based on Kentucky’s content standards. The test items measure Kentucky Core Content for Assessment (v4.1), a subset of the Program of Studies. Both of these documents define student expectations by content area and grade level.

 

Students in grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, and 12 will be assessed in content areas specific to their grade level.

 

 

Grade     Core Content Area

   3          reading, mathematics

   4*        reading, mathematics, science, PL/VS

   5          reading, mathematics, social studies, A&H, ODW

   6          reading, mathematics

   7*        reading, mathematics, science, PL/VS

   8          reading, mathematics, social studies, A&H, ODW

 10          reading, PL/VS

 11          mathematics, science, social studies, A&H

 12*        on-demand writing (ODW) (Fall Testing window)

  Download the 2008 KCCT Results.  Note that the first worksheet includes all Kentucky districts and schools.  This data has been broken out by type school (high school, middle school, and elementary school with multiple additional worksheets to analyze the data).

 

In the Spring/Summer 2009 edition of “What’s Happening in Oldham Kentucky, Kentucky”, Superintendent Upchurch provided its Annual Report of Excellence.  In addition to recognizing award recipients—schools, teachers, and students—Mr. Upchurch presented academic performance results from 2008 and compared them to Kentucky’s performance.

As one would expect, Oldham County schools exceeded commonwealth results in all categories.  These results should reinforce Oldham County citizens’ confidence in the leadership and performance of our schools—correct?

Not necessarily. 

Last year, to its credit, the Board of Education published its District Goals for 2009/2009.  Download the Oldham County Board of Education District Goals for 2008-2009. 

The seven-page document was posted on the Board of Education website in late summer of last year.  The document included four board goals.  The first goal is “Improving Student Achievement.”  The school district has established Kentucky Core Content Test Goals and other academic goals in coordination with each individual school within the county. 

The Board established goals for each school with respect to achieving Kentucky Core Content Test academic index levels; achieving relative ranking of individual schools compared to all public schools in Kentucky; goals for other national norm-referenced tests; ACT results for high-school juniors; and goals for Advance Placement results (percentage of students scoring 3 or above).  The goals generally exceed the state goals.  Our unofficial tabulation of state data reflects that the elementary, middle, and high schools as a whole did not meet combined Academic Index score goals and ranking objectives. 

The goals assumed improvement from 2006/2007 to 2007/2008 in test results and school rankings.  The bulk of the data was available last fall, to include the Kentucky Core Content Test results.  However, the results compared to the Board’s goals have not been provided to the public as of September 2009.

The question should be asked of Superintendent Upchurch is why he reported academic results against Kentucky averages when he should report the results against the Board of Education’s published goals.  More importantly, why haven’t those results been updated and available to the public? 

Let’s review the results against the Board of Education goals in order to generate a meaningful, public discussion of school performance and trends in this county:

  • For elementary schools, two of nine met their 07/08 Academic Index goals.  Four of nine improved from 06/07.  Two remained the same.  Three of nine declined.
  • For elementary schools, one of nine (11%) met their adjusted rankings goal, although six of nine improved from 06/07.
  • Of 27 data point goals for Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (to measure progress against national norms), the district’s elementary schools achieved a combined 16 (59%).
  • For middle schools, three of four missed their academic index goals, but all four did improve from 06/07.  Two of the four middle schools missed their ranking goal; two improved; one remained the same, and one declined.
  • All four of the middle schools failed to achieve their respective 08/09 Explore goals and the middle schools collectively missed 8 of 24 Iowa test goals.
  • Two of three high schools missed their respective academic index goal, although two of three improved from 06/07.  All three high schools missed their ranking goal, with two of three dropping in relative ranking from 06/07 and one remaining the same.
  • Two of three high schools declined in ACT score performance from 2008 to 2009.
  • All three high schools failed to achieve their respective AP scores goals for 07/08.

Below are the individual school results.  Note that as of September 4, 2009, the Superindent of Schools had not released the official results.
We have obtained the data from his office and compiled the results below:

The Board of Education approved the 2008/2009 formal working budget of nearly $103 million last fall with little public comment or notice.  The same was true for the 2009/2010 budgets.  Nearly $100 million in construction is on-going and the board submitted its facility plan to the Kentucky Department of Education for another $100 in 2008.   The OCBE spends more in two months than the Fiscal Court spends annually.  Whereas even relatively small expenditures in Fiscal Court can generate receive debate and public input, multi-million dollar decisions receive little attention. 

Unfortunately, the Student Vision adopted by the OCBE does not allow taxpayers to assess the system’s overall effectiveness.  Likewise, the Oldham County School’s mission statement, “…to prepare students of all ages to become lifelong learners who are self-sufficient, responsible, and participating members of a democratic society, who function productively in a global economy and experience the satisfaction of reaching their full potential”  can not be measured.  County citizens have bought into the “award winning school system” marketing slogan over the years without “peeling back the onion” to determine the strengths and weaknesses of Oldham County individual schools. 

There is clearly a preponderance of strengths for Oldham County schools; there are also weaknesses. 

Public education in America today is a data rich environment.  One would expect the OCBE website to have a robust performance section on the site to examine test results and trends, compare schools locally and nationally, and generally measure the OCBE’s vision and mission against results.  Incredibly, there are no test results or other metrics on the OCBE website.  One can visit individual school websites to access performance data, but the data are not standardized from one type school to another. 

Fortunately, one can access multiple sources, to include the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE), to obtain raw data as well as refined data with charts, ability to compare multiple schools, and more.  SchoolMatters.com, a service of Standard and Poor’s is another excellent site with data, graphs, and comparison capabilities that should be available on the OCBE web. 

From the KDE website, we can determine that the Oldham County School district achieved the highest county ACT scores for juniors in Kentucky in 2008, with North Oldham High School 3rd, South Oldham County 9th and Oldham County 15th respectively. However, we can also see that both North Oldham and Oldham County High School declined in 2009.  

From the Courier-Journal web, we can learn that Oldham County high schools scored 5th, 7th, and 14th respectively, of the 223 Kentucky High Schools.  We can also determine that our elementary schools displayed some weaknesses.  Of the state’s 649 elementary schools, Buckner Elementary was the highest ranked Oldham County primary school (32nd) in the 2008 CATs while one school ranked 289th and another 421st. 

From the KDE web, we learn that for the 2008 Kentucky Core Content Tests (the academic component of CATs), the Oldham County School District ranked 5th overall and the number one county school system for high schools.  For middle schools, the district was ranked 4th overall and 2nd for county school systems.  For elementary schools, the district ranked 19th overall and 11th for county systems.  Four elementary schools ranked in the top 100 but alarmingly, four ranked between numbers 206 and 421. 

While, local high schools generally rank well at the state level, their performance at the national level is mixed.  For our students to complete successfully in the local, national and international economy (see vision statement), we would expect that our schools should also be competitive at the national and international levels.

Of Newsweek’s and the Washington Post’s 2008 listing of top five percent of high schools nationally, only 12 Kentucky schools made the list.  Oldham County High School made the list for the second year in the row with a 1,375 ranking of the top 1,442 included.  It dropped 112 spots from the 2007 list.  South Oldham made the 2007 list but was not included in the 2008 list.  This survey uses a ratio based on the number of AP, International Baccalaureate and/or Cambridge tests taken by all students at a school in 2007 divided by the number of graduating seniors as its key metric.

The 2008 U.S.News and World Report America's Best High Schools methodology, is based on the key principles that a great high school must serve all its students well, not just those who are bound for college, and that it must be able to produce measurable academic outcomes that show the school is successfully educating its student body across a range of performance indicators.  It analyzed academic and enrollment data from more than 18,000 public high schools to find the very best across the country. These top schools were placed into gold (top 100 high schools nationally) silver, or bronze medal categories.

Twenty-three Kentucky schools are recognized in the 2008 list including six Silver Medal winners, to include North Oldham and South Oldham High Schools.  There were no Kentucky Gold Medal winners.  Advanced Placement data for seniors was the key benchmark used to rate schools.

December 18, 2008

Spotlight on Oldham County Schools

Oldham County citizens place a significant amount of trust in the Oldham County school system and ask little in terms of oversight and accountability compared to Oldham County Fiscal Court.  However, like any government agency, scrutiny and oversight are essential to ensure taxpayers are receiving the most “bang for the buck”—a common term in the education field these day. 

The Board of Education approved the 2008/2009 formal working budget of nearly $103 million this fall with little public comment or notice.  Nearly $100 million in construction is on-going and the board submitted its facility plan to the Kentucky Department of Education for another $100 last spring.   The OCBE spends more in two months than the Fiscal Court spends annually.  Whereas even relatively small expenditures in Fiscal Court can generate receive debate and public input, multi-million dollar decisions receive little attention. 

How well are our schools performing against its goals and objectives?  Currently, one can not tell as performance data is not posted on the Oldham County Board of Education website.  On balance, the schools appear to still perform very well compared to other Kentucky peer schools.  However, when one looks more closely into data available on the Kentucky Department of Education website and other sources, one might conclude that the district is losing its "edge" compared to previous years. 

We've added to this site a significant amount of data from a variety of sources so that you can review and analyze the data and judge for yourself.

View School Data