I did a little of my own research after posting a blog earlier today about two school districts that were questioning data in their 2009 No Child Left Behind Reports (NCLB). Instead of looking at district level data, I looked at the counts statewide for students tested under NCLB for reading in 2008 and 2009.…
This E.D. Hirsch commentary in the new “The Chronicle of Higher Education” should be required reading for every educator. Hirsch explains how a major focus on “child centered” instruction often acts to prevent those children from being able to participate in our republican form of government. Hirsch knows that one of the key goals of…
The new Kentucky No Child Left Behind (NCLB) scores for 2009 have been out less than a week, but at least two school districts are already questioning their reports. The most recent situation was covered by the News-Graphic from Georgetown. Under the title, “Schools score 94.7 percent, fail No Child Left Behind” (Subscription), the newspaper…
I’ve already discussed (here and here) two closely related ways some poorly performing schools in Kentucky got their No Child Left Behind (NCLB) accountability slates wiped clean without ever meeting required academic targets. Those “slate wipes” were related to changes in the students attending the schools. It turns out that there is a third way…
One of the great strengths of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) school accountability program over our old CATS assessments is the focus on not leaving any subgroup of students behind. While CATS never had any penalties for a school that failed with say, its African-Americans or its kids in poverty, NCLB does. Furthermore, we…
I wrote earlier today about how the court-directed busing program in Louisville acted to destroy No Child Left Behind (NCLB) accountability in several of that district’s schools. Now, I’m going to discuss how a rather closely related event, changes in school zones, can have the same disastrous impact on NCLB accountability. Kentucky Administrative Regulation 703…
It came as a real shock. After the new 2009 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) scores released on September 23, 2009, one of the first things I checked was how the 34 schools that were in Tier 5 status last year performed in this new report. These 34 schools are of high interest following our…
I’m getting into the numbers from the new 2009 NCLB report for Kentucky, and the overall results look strange. To put it mildly, either our elementary schools are doing a bang up job while our middle and high schools are in real trouble, or our elementary school level assessments are far too easy and hide…
Refusing to let CATS die, the ‘KERA Amen Chorus’ has developed its own ‘home-brewed,’ CATS-like school ‘assessment’ scoring scheme. The Herald-Leader, which often sings soprano for KERA, is using the results from this dubious program in a new on-line search tool. Somehow, this feeble attempt to prolong CATS seems rather pathetic. The Kentucky legislature unanimously…
Apparently, a group of Jefferson County teachers have had enough of their union’s heavy-handed recruiting and member-holding policies. They are suing for the right to resign from the union at any time. The suit names the Jefferson County Teachers Association (Union local), the Kentucky Education Association (State-level union organization), the National Education Association and the…