Two key education bills, House Bill 322, which grants school superintendents a more extensive say in the selection of principals, and House Bill 301, which takes a number of actions aimed at improving the state’s inadequate high school graduation rate, received extensive attention today in the House Education Committee meeting. Herald-Leader reporter Ryan Alessi does…
We’ve been covering the loss of parental choice options because of the Knox County Public Schools’ recent cancellation of their long-standing student transfer agreement with the Corbin Independent School District since January. Initially, it looked like around 160 or so kids would be forced to return to Knox County schools, but a new announcement says…
Fortunately, this $1.25 million mess didn’t happen in Kentucky, but there are lessons here for us. The Jennings School District in Missouri purchased thousands of Palm T/Xs to give to every student in the system, grades three to twelve. The plan included spending $200,000 for teacher instruction on how to incorporate these hand-held devices into…
It’s a sad tale – one we want to safeguard against when Kentucky sets up charter schools – but it looks like there were a lot of fiscal oversight foul-ups in Ohio prior to the demise of the Harte Crossroads schools in Columbus. Important records for Harte simply don’t exist, and the possibility of criminal…
“What the heck is school curriculum doing in court, anyway? The answer tells us a lot about the problems of public schools.” Dick Lilly, former member, Seattle Public School Board We blogged a few days ago about a stunning court case in Seattle that says the school district in that city erred when it selected…
It’s the gap few talk about – the performance gap for our top students, those who score at the “Advanced” level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and drag home those “5” scores on Advanced Placement exams. Now, the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy in Indiana has issued an extensive report on…
– Judge flunks Seattle’s high school math program More coverage, this time a video, from KOMO TV in Seattle on the lawsuit against Discovery Math. http://www.komonews.com/v/?i=83587497 If your Kentucky student is using any of the textbooks shown in this video, we’d like to hear about it.
Over at the Kentucky School Boards Association’s “Kentucky School Advocate” web place Brad Hughes asks a good question on page 27 of this somewhat clunky to read web document. Asks Hughes, “When customers squawk, do schools listen?” Hughes goes on to write that while Kentucky may never open a single charter school, the debate is…
In what may be a ground-breaking precedent, a court in Seattle has just thrown out Seattle’s so-called “Discovery” math curriculum. The Seattle PI article says the math just didn’t “add up for a King County Superior Court judge, who rejected the style of instruction Thursday and ordered the district to try again.” In the past,…
– What’s the rush? It looks like Kentucky educators are rushing willy-nilly to sign onto Common Core Standards for K to 12 education before they’ve even see the final version. Many questions remain unanswered. The final release is delayed, again. Is this the right way to adopt new education standards? Why all the rush? Two…