Table of Contents
This report by Richard Innes examines Kentucky's School Based Decision Making (SBDM) program, a signature feature of the 1990 Kentucky Education Reform Act that transferred sweeping authority over curriculum, staffing, and budgets from locally elected school boards to school-level councils composed primarily of principals and teachers.
After more than a quarter-century of operation, the report finds that virtually no comprehensive research on SBDM effectiveness has been conducted since 2001, that management audits of the state's lowest-performing "Priority Schools" reveal widespread dysfunction in long-established councils — including curriculum neglect, failure to use data, and poor stakeholder engagement — and that parent participation in council elections is strikingly low, with nearly three-quarters of Kentucky schools showing single-digit ratios of voting parents to student enrollment. Meanwhile, student achievement on the NAEP has improved at an agonizingly slow pace, with proficiency rates for Black students remaining deeply alarming.
Key Takeaways
- SBDM councils in the lowest-performing schools were chronically dysfunctional. Management audits of 10 Priority Schools revealed that these long-established councils routinely failed to adopt or implement needed policies, neglected curriculum development, ignored data-driven decision making, and excluded key stakeholders — problems that persisted for over 15 years without correction until external intervention forced change. Two-thirds of all Priority Schools ultimately had their SBDM authority removed.
- Parent engagement — a central goal of the program — has largely failed. In 818 of 1,124 Kentucky public schools, fewer than 10 percent of students were represented by a voting parent in SBDM elections. In 101 schools the ratio was below one percent. Only 15 schools statewide exceeded 50 percent, suggesting that the promise of meaningful parental involvement in school governance remains overwhelmingly unmet.
- The research vacuum is itself a policy failure. Despite numerous unresolved questions about SBDM functioning identified as early as 2001, virtually no follow-on research was ever conducted. This means Kentucky has continued to operate under a highly experimental governance model for decades without any systematic evaluation of whether it serves students well — or whether it insulates poor leadership from accountability.
The report suggests that Kentucky's SBDM model, whatever its original aspirations, has not delivered on its core promises of improved student outcomes and meaningful parent engagement.
Instead, it has created a governance structure that can shield failing schools from the corrective authority of locally elected boards and superintendents, while placing unrealistic demands on school-level personnel who often lack the time, training, and expertise to handle complex decisions around curriculum, budgeting, and staffing. Policymakers should seriously consider restoring meaningful authority to locally elected school boards and district superintendents, while ensuring that any retained elements of school-level governance are subject to regular evaluation, transparent accountability, and genuine parental empowerment.
