No kidding! A USA Today column on January 1, 2014 says New York City’s new mayor should wake up to the DRAMATIC performance in the city’s many charter schools. What kinds of performance? Here are a few extracts from the column: • Stanford’s Center for Research on Educational Outcomes (CREDO) revealed that in just one…
By now, you probably would have to live on another planet – or strictly confine your reading only to what the Kentucky Education Association publishes – to not know about the huge charter school miracle going on in Louisiana. These public schools have created a post-Hurricane Katrina miracle. And, even the crowd that published some…
I have been writing and speaking about major problems with Kentucky’s recent, wholesale adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards as the only K to 12 public school standards for science in the state. Already, evidence of the deficiencies I have been talking about is cropping up. For example, I recently discussed a Kentucky high…
A new report on the superior performance of Boston’s charter schools got me thinking about a comparison with Kentucky’s Jefferson County Public Schools. Both Boston and Jefferson County are large, city-based school systems, but I honestly thought the student demographics in Boston would give that city a notable advantage over the Louisville area schools in…
Here are some interesting facts from the Alliance for Public Charter Schools, with a few added comments from me: • Children who attend charter schools are more likely to graduate from high school than their traditional school peers. And dozens of charter schools across the country have 100 percent college acceptance rates for their graduating…
“Millions of students across America,” and thousands right here in Kentucky, “are not getting the education they deserve.” In the new Bluegrass Institute report, “Kentucky’s ‘Unbridled Learning,’ Unrigorous School Accountability for African-American Students?,” we provide dramatic evidence of schools in the Bluegrass State where whites or blacks are being solidly left behind in mathematics. In…
The new Quality Counts education report has been released by Education Week, and the inevitable spin is on from the Kentucky Department of Education in their News Release 14-003. The first table in the department’s press release shows Kentucky’s ranking in the various areas Quality Counts examined between 2011 and 2014. The table below extracts…
CN|2’s Ryan Alessi recently interviewed James Comer (R), Kentucky Commissioner of Agriculture, about budget issues in the now open Kentucky legislative session, and Comer was quick to point to a major push for funding changes in education. However, Comer didn’t call for more revenue. Instead, he pointed out that a lot of our education dollars…
As we move into the new legislative session, with a bill on charter schools already being prepared, it is interesting to note findings from a fairly recent report about charter school performance in the National Assessment of Educational Progress. It is important to note that the NAEP is not really an ideal tool to look…
We are off in a new year, and the education landscape is already looking “lively.” The year started right off with me getting that “where did I see that name come up?” feeling. This feeling was triggered by the Herald-Leader’s January 2, 2014 article, “Danville superintendent leading the way away from standardized testing.” The newspaper…