As I wrote yesterday, the Kentucky Board of Education heard the public comments about new testing rules that will no longer allow teachers to read state reading assessments to students with learning disabilities. After a review of those public comments, the board decided to move ahead on schedule to eliminate readers from the reading tests…
Learn all about it here, and see Gov. Bob Wise’s introductory video, too.
It’s no secret to readers of this blog: Kentucky has had a very bad policy for evaluating reading abilities of learning disabled students ever since the first reform assessments began way back in 1992. Under this ill-advised policy, it has been legal to set up Individual Education Plans (IEP) for these students that required all…
TV ads from the Kentuckians for Reform in Education, or KARE coalition, which recently formed to fight for charter schools in Kentucky, have stirred the Prichard Committee to again venture into dubious analytical waters with the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The Bluegrass Institute is not a part of KARE, but we are always…
The 17th edition of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s annual report on education has just been released, and this year this widely read analysis refuses to even rank Kentucky’s fourth and eighth grade reading results from the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) in many of its state to state comparison charts. Why? Kentucky didn’t…
As regular readers know, I have been tracking high school graduation rates in 14 states and Washington, DC. I now have accessed another year of federally computed high school graduation rate data and can extend the study through the high school graduating class of 2009. Here is my updated graph. It shows the annual rate…
On problems with education research, state education rankings and teacher preparation I have written several blogs over the past few days about an annual rite of passage in the education world. On January 12, 2012 Education Week released its annual report on education across the United States, known as Quality Counts (subscription). Kentucky’s education boosters…
The Courier-Journal reports that the Bullitt County board of education has approved plans for designs to add new learning centers in its three high schools. The new digitally-based centers would be targeted at helping kids who are not progressing in traditional classrooms and will also be used for other programs ranging from advanced course support…
Education Week’s Politics K-12 Blog picked up on President Obama’s claim in his State of the Union message that raising the minimum high school dropout age to 18 increases high school graduation. I don’t know where the president got that notion, but my very straightforward analysis of graduation rates in states that have had age…
On problems with education research, state education rankings and teacher preparation Do you really think Kentucky improved 20 places in state rankings for education recently? Well, you better think again. On January 12, 2012 Education Week released its annual report on education across the United States, known as Quality Counts (subscription). Kentucky’s education boosters wasted…