Reports from the ACT, Inc. and the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) give us information about how all Kentucky students averaged together and just Kentucky’s public school students alone perform on the ACT college entrance test. However, there are no agencies reporting about ACT scores for those Kentucky students who didn’t go to public schools.…
Well, not in Kentucky! In case you missed my earlier blog about high school grade point averages (GPAs) versus the ACT college entrance test as predictors of college performance, there is an effort underway across the country and in Kentucky to reduce attention to the fairly disappointing scores from the ACT college entrance test. While…
Not in Kentucky! There is an effort underway across the country and in Kentucky to reduce emphasis on and attention to the fairly disappointing scores from the ACT college entrance test. The argument being made is that high school grade point averages (GPA) are better predictors of college performance, so emphasis on the ACT is…
Education Week just released an interesting article by Stephan Sawchuk with the rather pertinent title for Kentuckians of “How history class divides us” (subscription). Kentucky is currently going through the process of revising its public school social studies standards, and these standards must contain everything about history that the Bluegrass State’s students are expected to…
Topic: New high school graduation requirements The Bluegrass Institute’s staff education analyst, Richard Innes, appears tonight on Kentucky Tonight to discuss the state’s new high school graduation requirements. These pending requirements will establish new quality control standards for the state’s standard high school diploma. Those requirements include new minimum competency testing in math and reading.…
I blogged several days ago about “Which Kentucky school districts grade too hard or too easy?,” discussing evidence in the 2018 High School Feedback Workbook assembled by the Kentucky Center for Statistics. The data, which is for the graduating class of 2015-16, includes ACT scores and high school Grade Point Averages (GPA) for each school…
Here is a video clip from the Kentucky Board of Education’s October 2, 2018 meeting where former Kentucky History Teacher of the Year Donnie Wilkerson briefly outlines why he opposes the current draft of the social studies standards. Donnie talks pretty quickly in this because so much is wrong and he only is being allowed…
A new report from the Fordham Institute about “Grade Inflation in High Schools (2005–2016)” relates to topics like “Hollow Diplomas” that we have been concerned about at the Bluegrass Institute for some time (see here and here for some examples). The new study, which looks at results for North Carolina, contains some interesting findings, including:…
One of the interesting things about the way we determine the school entry age is that the process creates essentially a full year’s difference in age between students found in the same classrooms. The impacts start when kids are only five years old. As The Conversation points out, the age differential in each entering Kindergarten…
I wrote a little while back about the very disappointing condition of the current draft for Kentucky’s social studies standards. I thought the standards might show up at the Kentucky Board of Education’s October 3-4 meetings, but except for some very negative comments during the public comment period, that didn’t happen. But, other standards did…