They should have seen it coming. By the time the Livingston Central High School was added to the list of Persistently Low-Achieving Schools (PLAs) in Kentucky, the program was no longer a secret. In fact, the PLAs program had already completed two cycles of school selections. Livingston had to know they were getting close. In…
Some of you who are not regular readers of this blog probably crossed your eyes over this headline. “How can you read kids a reading test,” you probably asked yourselves. Well, this is Kentucky, where just about every radical education fad has its day. Back in the early days of KERA, in the interests of…
Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday provides a brief but interesting overview of Kentucky’s new public school assessment and accountability program in this Ledger-Independent article. What remains to be seen is how well Kentucky’s new assessment and accountability program follows through on reducing the achievement gaps that have continued to plague the state for decades.…
Talk about bad timing! The education community is screaming that they are not getting enough money. Now, along comes this headline – Kentucky will become second state to sanction high school bass fishing. It’s not April first, so who gets to finance those bass boats, the travel, etc.? Do inner city Louisville kids get to…
Yesterday we looked at some National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Grade 4 mathematics data for students eligible for the federal school lunch program (a poverty measure) for charter schools versus non-charter schools. The data was broken down by race and was obtained from the NAEP Data Explorer. Now, let’s see how eighth grade students…
Information about charter school performance from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is sketchy and inconclusive. An important part of the problem is that the NAEP student sample sizes for charter schools have been rather small, which creates a lot of measurement error in NAEP charter school scores. The large measurement error in turn…
Charter school expert Dr. Howard Fuller provided the Kentucky House’s Education Committee lots of frank food for thought on February 14, 2012. He didn’t gloss over things, and he didn’t make charter schools out as a magic fix to everything. He did make a strong case that charter schools are a valuable option in places…
WFPL reports that after 12 years of operation, the Kentucky Virtual High School (KVHS) program is shutting down. The Kentucky Department of Education operated KVHS offered a variety of on-line study options from high level Advanced Placement courses to standard high school courses and even remedial options. As I discussed several years ago, KVHS turned…
Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday has some sobering comments about how increasing health care costs for state employees and retirees are unsustainable. In his discussion of the ballooning costs, Holliday simply declares: “The current path is not sustainable.” Holliday candidly admits this is “well above my pay grade” to solve, but his department and…
One of the more interesting presentations at the February 1, 2012 meeting of the Kentucky Board of Education was offered by the Kentucky School Boards Association’s (KSBA) ‘eMeeting’ team. eMeeting is a computer-based meeting support program for groups like local and state boards of education. It allows automated development of the meeting agenda and support…