No substitute for choice: Improving education in Jefferson County

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – While some have suggested that the primary obstacle to bringing needed reforms to the Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) is the sheer size of the district which needs to be broken up into smaller districts, a new Bluegrass Institute policy brief argues that introducing “a strong measure of school choice and competition” offer the accountability and incentives badly needed to improve the district’s academic results.

 In “Improving K-12 Education in Jefferson County,” Paul Coomes, Ph.D., and John Garen, Ph.D., note the “current and long standing difficulties” plaguing JCPS, including low test scores, transportation failure, lack of school discipline and low teacher morale related to various issues, including safety concerns. These issues, they assert, will not be resolved without the results created by the dynamics of “consumer choice and provider competition that are the foundation for success in private enterprises.”

Despite nearly $25,000 in per-pupil funding, a majority of JCPS students fail to attain proficiency in reading and math on state tests; results on the federal “Nation’s Report Card” indicate that not only has there been no improvement in test scores since 2009, the academic achievement gap between White and Black students continues to widen.

Garen and Coomes conclude that the size of the district alone is not the major obstacle toward addressing these problems. Rather, they suggest that breaking up the districts would be more likely to cause the public school bureaucracy to grow as “each district will tend to duplicate all the overhead expenses that JCPS currently incurs” without changing the district’s current “top-down student assignment regime.”

It also would not address the lack of accountability that arises from the cozy relationship of the JCPS administration and the local teachers’ union, the Jefferson County Teachers Association.

“Their union PAC funds almost all the successful school board candidates, who then oversee the administration – the same administration that bargains with the union regarding pay and work rules for teachers,” the report states. “That school board is also empowered to set property tax rates countywide, which are now 40% higher on housing than they were 25 years ago, and more than double what they were in 1990.”

Bluegrass Institute President Jim Waters says the report confirms the need for educational freedom in Kentucky’s – and one of the nation’s largest – school districts.

“While Amendment 2 may have not been successful in removing legal barriers for funding mechanisms for parents to use toward a nonpublic education, we must find ways to offer options and opportunities to parents in this struggling school district,” Waters said. “Doing so will likely be more effective in closing gaps and improving performance than the failed experiments and large spending increases of the past several decades.”

The Kentucky Supreme Court will consider whether to uphold the constitutionality of House Bill 9, passed in 2022 by state lawmakers, which provided a funding mechanism for charter schools. Charters are publicly funded but managed differently than traditional public schools. They are schools allowed to take an innovative approach toward delivering public education, are free of some regulations that stifle the educational environment and are not beholden to teachers’ unions.

“We urge the Kentucky Supreme Court to consider the impact that public charter schools have nationwide on closing achievement gaps by giving low-income families an opportunity to provide a better educational fit for their children,” Waters said. “Nearly 4 million students attend 8,000 charter schools nationwide, many of which are filling an important educational need in large urban districts like JCPS.”

For more information, please contact report co-author John Garen at jgaren1953@gmail.com or Bluegrass Institute president Jim Waters at jwaters@freedomkentucky.com or 270.320.4376.

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Bluegrass Institute works with Kentuckians, grassroots organizations, and business owners to advance freedom and prosperity by promoting free-market capitalism, smaller government and defense of personal liberties.