Chapter 10: “That Dog Won’t Hunt!”: Exemplary School Change Efforts Within the Kentucky Reform

Our 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). Here 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 towards learning as well as their principals’ 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. How our four schools successfully met the challenge of KERA and KIRIS was unique to each site. Still, there were critical commonalties— 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 to and well beyond the KIRIS test (particularly in writing), and, most important, their dedication to students.

In a certain part of the country called Appalachia you will find dogs named Prince or King living in little towns with names like Coal City and Sally’s Backbone. These dogs run free, being country dogs, and their legs are full of muscles from running rabbits up mountains or from following boys who push old bikes against the hill roads they call hollows. These are mostly good dogs and can be trusted. (Rylant, 1991, p. 1)