“That Dog Won't Hunt!”: Exemplary School Change Efforts Within the Kentucky Reform

Abstract

This research presents case studies of four exemplary schools as they worked to meet the demands of the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) as well as the system designed to assess results—the Kentucky Instructional Results Information System (KIRIS). We argue that the teachers' responses to large-scale reform efforts exist in a larger web of connection and are dependent on their collaborative and consistently positive stance toward learning as well as their principal's leadership. Thus, human capital, the knowledge and willingness to learn on the part of individuals, is inextricably linked to social capital, the relationships of trust and willingness to risk among school personnel. The way in which the four schools successfully met the challenge of KERA and KIRIS was unique to each site. Still, there were critical commonalties among the teachers: their regard. for history and heritage; the efficacy of their cooperative leadership; their careful reflection on the reform itself which ultimately allowed them to teach well beyond the KIRIS test (particularly in writing); and, most important, their dedication to students.