In recent years Kentucky’s teachers have gotten some of the best salary increases in the nation according to recently released data in the Digest of Education Statistics 2011. Table 84 in that new release shows teachers’ salaries across the nation for the 2004-05 and 2010-11 school years in each state and the District of Columbia.…
During the first day of its two-day meeting, the Kentucky Board of Education (KBE) got good news about the high school graduation rate in Kentucky for the 2010-11 school year. The rate improved a bit. A news release from the Kentucky Department of Education and associated documents have more details, as summarized in this table.…
The chickens will soon come home to roost for Kentucky’s state assessment program, substantiating years of Bluegrass Institute research and comments. We’ve consistently shown you evidence over the years that the scores from the Kentucky Core Content Tests (KCCT) used for CATS accountability were seriously overstating the real performance of the state’s public school students.…
High school dropouts are a major problem all across Kentucky. Nearly one out of four students fails to earn a high school diploma within four years of high school entry. Even if we count all students who eventually get either a diploma or a certificate of completion, Kentucky’s public schools still loose one in five…
I didn’t see any media coverage, but the Kentucky Legislature launched a new “2012 Task Force on Student Access to Technology” on July 24, 2012 to determine the state of the state in digital learning in our classrooms and how we can enhance that. One task force goal will be to develop legislation to enhance…
It’s the kind of teacher professional development I like to hear about – something actually useful. In this case, teachers in the Corbin Independent School District got two days of training on some really useful digital tools like Google Docs and Google Earth along with examples of how to use those in their own classrooms.…
Parents, not bureaucrats, should have the right to choose where their children attend school. The only consideration should be if the gaining school district is willing to accept the child. There should be no way that a losing school district can stand in the way of a child’s better education just for selfish, ‘adult’ reasons.…
In a major upset to the power-hungry federal Environmental Protection Agency’s obvious attack on the coal industry, a federal Judge has ruled the agency overstepped its authority in relationship to state-level environmental agency authority. WFPL has the available details at this time on the ruling, which was released yesterday.
In case you missed the news, India just had a world record electrical power outage that impacted 620 million people across half of the country. The outage impacted 20 of India’s 28 states. India’s electrical generating capacity is apparently about eight percent smaller than current needs. The problem probably has been accelerated by that country’s…
Problem hints at much more serious issues The Courier-Journal reports that the almost all of 19 new teachers who will be at the Thomas Jefferson Middle School in Jefferson County this year are highly inexperienced. Ten of the new teachers have no working experience in the profession. Only three of the 19 have enough experience…