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ONE-ON-ONE - May 2004
by Ed G. Lane
'Kentucky Has Gone from a Laughing Stock to the Center of National Attention'
The executive director of the Prichard Committee talks about improving education in Kentucky
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Dr. Robert F. Sexton
Robert F. Sexton has been the executive director of the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence since its creation in 1983. The Prichard Committee is an independent advocacy group dedicated to the improvement of education for all Kentuckians.
The Louisville native has also served as the deputy director of the Kentucky Council on Higher Education, an administrator at the University of Kentucky, a professor of history, and a high school teacher. Over the course of his career, he has been recognized widely for his efforts to improve public education. His endeavors include founding the Kentucky Governor’s Scholars Program, the Commonwealth Institute for Teachers, and the Kentucky Center for Public Issues. In addition, he has been part of numerous boards and advisory groups for publications and foundations across the country. |
Ed Lane: When was the Prichard Committee founded and what was its original mission?
Robert Sexton: The committee was created by the Kentucky Council on Higher Education in 1980 as a blue ribbon committee on the future of higher education. After it completed its report on higher education, the members and I decided to turn it into what we today call the Prichard Committee.
This decision was made in 1983, after the committee made several recommendations about how to improve Kentucky’s higher education, and the General Assembly and Governor John Y. Brown seemed to have no interest in dealing with education. The people involved with the committee decided to turn it into an advocacy group, thinking that those people that cared about education in Kentucky needed to come together and start putting pressure on elected officials to move education to the top of the agenda.
EL: When the committee became an advocacy group, which major Kentucky companies were founding members?
RS: We had support in those early years from the Kentucky Economic Development Corporation that Bill Young chaired, the Bingham Foundation in Louisville, Ashland Oil, and Bell South. The committee always had a very small budget – around $150,000 to $180,000 for seven or eight years. The Committee was very much in collaboration with and supported by the business community.
EL: What were the initial issues on which the committee focused?
RS: We started with higher education, but decided that in a state like Kentucky – with its 100-year deficit in education – we really couldn’t separate higher education from elementary/secondary education.
EL: Since the founding of the committee, how has Kentucky’s K-12 education system improved?
RS: Kentucky has gone from a laughing stock to the center of national attention. There’s just no question that Kentucky education – the reform itself – is seen as one of the most powerful in the nation. There has been improvement in almost every indicator of educational progress. Kentucky is by far not where it needs to be; but compared to other states, our state has made incredible improvement.
EL: At this time, where do you see areas with the greatest opportunity for future improvement in Kentucky’s educational systems?
RS: Kentucky has huge gaps between the academic accomplishment of white and minority children, between economically well-off and not so well-off children; and we’re still not reaching everybody in our society. Fifty years ago, our educational system threw away half the students. Back then, we didn’t even pretend to try to educate everybody – it was not the goal of our system. Now it is, and we’re still not reaching them all. Kentucky needs to improve its high schools. Our biggest challenge, even though we’ve seen improvement, is to reach all children no matter where they happen to live.
EL: Governor Fletcher recently said our schools have too many administrators relative to the number of teachers in the classroom. Is this a potential area for improvement?
RS: Actually, the governor in saying that, got bad information. It’s inaccurate information.
States report to the National Center for Educational Statistics in different ways. Data that apparently were used in the governor’s op-ed piece had 42.6 percent of Kentucky’s total staff as teachers, but that left out 15.1 percent of staff who are instructional aides, so that put the instructional aides and teachers at 57.7 percent, compared to a 62 percent national average. So, Kentucky is somewhat below the national average.
EL: What percentage of students that graduate from high school attend college?
RS: Kentucky has been one of the fastest-improving states in college attendance rates in the nation. There are several reasons. In the late ‘90s the state began providing community colleges. Kentucky had a backlog of poorly educated adults – and a lot of them are women. Kentucky now has one of the largest populations of women in community colleges in the country.
EL: The growth and success of the reorganized Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) has been extremely strong. Why is this the case?
RS: Kentucky in general has a much higher, across-the-board, public awareness about the importance of education. KCTCS benefits from the dawning of the idea that education is vital to move forward, and that middle-class, middle-income jobs require education. As somebody else said, “the women get it.” Women are going back for postsecondary education in droves.
EL: KCTCS has added new campuses and educational programs that are targeted to educate people for jobs that pay well and are in demand.
RS: Very good point. The system’s become much more responsive, much more adaptable, much more accessible than it was 10 or 15 years ago.
 EL: The Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education’s (CPE) mission has been to boost enrollment levels. How would you rate their performance from your perspective?
RS: CPE was reorganized in 1997 and given the charge to increase college enrollment to the national average and bring more focus to the individual campuses. And I think they’ve done that. The council’s been successful. They’ve still got a lot of issues on which to work. The main question is: Are Kentucky’s universities well- focused on their missions?
One of the top missions for UK and UofL is to achieve excellence in research. CPE cannot achieve their goals in research. Success in the research mission must be through the joint efforts of the legislature, the governor and the universities.
EL: Kentucky has a number of low-population counties that have very small school systems. Would it be better to consolidate two or three counties and form one larger system with lower administrative costs? Are you aware of any counties that are working together in a collaborative way?
RS: Not really. Collaboration has started in law enforcement, public safety and economic development. Some of our smallest school systems are our best. So, you’ve got a little political challenge here.
EL: How would you evaluate Kentucky’s Commissioner of Education, Gene Wilhoit? He’s been on duty for about four years.
RS: Commissioner Wilhoit has been the strongest commissioner Kentucky has had. He’s reached out very well to local school districts. There was a lot of tension between the state and the districts that he has eliminated. He’s included the superintendents so that they feel they’re part of the decision-making process. He’s established good legislative relationships and proved to be a strong decision maker. I would give him very high marks.
EL: We have a new secretary of education, Virginia Fox. There’s been some recent effort by the House of Representatives to limit her authority and duties.
RS: She never had any responsibilities or duties. What the governor proposed was expanding her duties to include supervision of the Department of Education. The law does not provide for the secretary of education to oversee the Department of Education. The governor proposed in an executive order that the duties of that office be expanded to include the Department of Education and CPE. The House did not approve that executive order. The House in the budget language, specifically stipulated that the secretary of education would not have expanded duties. So, there’s no stripping; she never had them.
EL: That’s one of the problems with state government. The House didn’t pass any of the governor’s executive orders regarding reorganization of state government.
RS: That’s got to be resolved; that’s one of the issues. There are a lot of people in the state that have worked for many years to get politics out of education. That’s one reason you’re seeing this reaction. It’s not about the person, it’s about the precedent. Personally, I just don’t see how making education more political is going to improve schools.
EL: Are you concerned that Governor Fletcher didn’t get tax modernization and the impact that may have on education?
RS: We’ve got to get it. The modernization program that was proposed wouldn’t have had an impact on education. The Prichard Committee has argued for many years for a tax reform that would grow with the economy. We need to go to work on creating such a system. Kentucky has to have tax reform.
EL: Do you have any comments or observations about the political landscape in Frankfort and how it may change in the next few years?
RS: There’s no question that this the hardest transition I’ve seen. I actually started in Kentucky with this kind of work with the last Republican administration, working for Louie Nunn. I wasn’t there at the beginning, but Louie Nunn had a difficult transition too. Back then, the political world was not nearly so contentious and nasty – frankly – as it is now.
EL: How would you rate the governors’ utilization of the Prichard Committee with regard to education matters?
RS: The Prichard Committee had an unusual situation to start with, in that both Brereton Jones and Paul Patton were members back in the 1980s before they were governor. So, we had an existing relationship.
Governor Fletcher did not come into office with a big education agenda. This campaign wasn’t about that. Everybody is waiting to see Governor Fletcher’s plan. He hasn’t had a chance yet – partly because of the transition – to lay out his ambitions for education.
EL: You have been following the trends for a long time and perhaps are Kentucky’s best expert on education. So hopefully, somebody’s going to use your expertise.
RS: The committee has had good conversations with Secretary Virginia Fox. My big concern is that Kentucky breaks through this gridlock. The amount of time that the governor and the legislature are taking just to pass any old budget sucks up time that needs to go to providing others kind of leadership.
EL: Why do some school systems excel and what makes them different from systems that aren’t doing so well?
RS: The systems that have shown the best improvement have strong, focused leadership at the top and the school level. They have put energy in the classroom and concentrated on developing and training teachers. They have engaged the community. They have focused, focused, focused on academic achievement and they’ve made it very clear that they refuse to accept anything less than reaching every kid. It’s amazing, but a lot of it is just focus and concentration. And, it is leadership, of course.
EL: Lexington/Fayette County has experienced several turnovers in school superintendents. Have there been other areas of the state that have had the same problem?
RS: The last one in Lexington was just plain bad luck. Let me just start with the whole story. Fayette County has really struggled with continuity. For a long time I thought it was chaos in the board - a lack of focus and common vision on the part of the board. It’s looked to me like that issue has been straightening out. That’s why I thought it was so unfortunate that Lexington had this bad break, with superintendent Ken James going back to Arkansas, because it looked to me like the board and the superintendent were moving forward pretty well together. The board chair, Kathy Lousignont, seems to be able to get consensus and involve people. Harvey Wilkinson did the same thing. So, we’ve had two good board chairs.
EL: We seem to have the attitude in Kentucky that somebody from “out of state” is better than anyone we have locally. Someone recruited from Kentucky would be less likely to relocate. And there is the benefit of hiring local people that have been in the system, they’ve seen it from both sides of the desk. Whereas, a new person coming in has got to sit around for a while and figure out what’s happening. What’s been your experience with recruiting someone locally?
RS: There are people in Kentucky who could certainly be competitive for these top jobs, no question about it. There’re very few people in the country that are successful in running big school systems. Turnover is very high. It’s an incredibly demanding job, probably because of all the conflicting public challenges. Turnover is something like two years. It just doesn’t make any sense, it’s just crazy.
EL: One of the problems we’ve had in Kentucky is the state’s schools were educating a lot of people, but they were leaving the state and going to Atlanta or Cincinnati or Chicago to get a job.
RS: This is kind of a chicken and egg deal. Kentucky is a state that’s famous for a poorly educated population. It’s hard to create jobs; it’s easy to have a poorly educated population if you don’t attract educated people. That’s why states like Kentucky, Alabama and West Virginia are struggling so hard in this new economy.
EL: Do you have a chance to talk to Lee Todd, Jim Ramsey and other college presidents on a regular basis? Have they discussed cutting their budgets and raising tuition charges because of lower federal and state revenues?
RS: The most harmful impact of the past three or four years has been in higher education. Universities have taken the biggest cuts. They have had to shift costs to students. I remind people every day that the average college student is a 30-year-old woman. It is not some 19-year-old being supported by their parents. The university presidents have a right to feel very frustrated. You’ve studied the Kentucky economy, and know how much it takes to bring in a top-notch nationally competitive scientist who can create jobs. That’s what Kentucky’s universities are not able to do.
Ed G. Lane is chief executive of Lane Consultants Inc. and publisher
of The Lane Report.
edlane@lanereport.com
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