Elementary & Secondary Education
“In Kentucky, an entirely new philosophy of management is being put
into place which is based on … accountability. That kind of creative
thinking is government’s best role in education – setting goals, providing
incentives, and then demanding accountability.”
President George H.W. Bush
April 1990
1980-1990
This presidential praise was prompted by the 1990 General
Assembly’s enactment of the Kentucky Education Reform Act
(KERA), sweeping legislation that restructured and redefined the
way the state designed, delivered, governed and financed education.
The demanding, comprehensive program established by KERA
came in a state that Business Week described as “an unlikely
place” for such an initiative. Similar descriptions were not uncommon at the time – and with reason. Here is the context of the
Harvard Family Research Project’s conclusion that Kentucky had
“nowhere to go but up” in education and its description of what
prompted the change:
Kentucky’s history has been marked by consistently poor
performance in education. …In the 1980s, Kentucky ranked
50th in the nation in adult literacy and the percentage of
adults with a high school diploma, 49th in percentage of
college graduates, 42nd in per pupil expenditure, and 41st
in pupil-teacher ratio. In 1983, the state was described by
MIT economist David Birch as a Third World country with the
nation’s most uneducated workforce.
After decades of failed initiatives resulting from piecemeal
proposals and limited political will, substantive change began
in 1985 when 66 poor school districts sued the state, arguing
that Kentucky’s financing of schools was inadequate and inequitable. The lower court found glaring disparities in funding,
salaries, materials, curricula, and class size. In a 1989 landmark decision, the state’s Supreme Court declared Kentucky’s
entire system of common schools to be unconstitutional (Rose
v. Council for Better Education, Inc.). As a result, the General
Assembly was ordered to recreate, not just equalize, funding
of the state’s school system to ensure equal educational
opportunities for all children.
A Citizen’s Guide to Kentucky Education — June 2016
Although funding disparities provided strong motivation for
the reform movement, other factors were also of particular concern – especially governance and nepotism.
At the time of KERA’s passage, the chief education executive in
the state was chosen by popular election. The Superintendent of
Public Instruction, as the officeholder was then known, was not
required to have experience or expertise in education policy or
practice, and the operations of the state Department of Education
were perceived to be, or actually were, subject to the vicissitudes
of partisan politics.
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