The Prichard Committee’s Blog just admitted that there was a steady relaxation of grading rigor in Kentucky’s old assessment programs, bringing Prichard into agreement with a case the Bluegrass Institute has been making for many years. Our readers know the Institute has conducted all sorts of studies of dubious scoring in the state’s public school…
– Won’t shoot at same Yesterday I put up a post on how a few die-hard CATS fans plan to publish their own, homemade version of a CATS-like rating of our schools. I pointed out that is a bad idea, which continues to aim schools in the wrong direction, and likening it to shooting at…
– Local Districts Putting Check Registers on Line Transparency in government is a current hot topic here at the Bluegrass Institute and around the country. Not long ago, we were a sponsor for a Mercatus Center presentation on transparency to the Kentucky legislature and others are also very involved with improving the openness of government.…
While this Blog’s readers have been well-informed about the serious problems with writing instruction in Kentucky’s public schools, some education folk remained in denial. We documented the evidence of writing’s woes over the past eight months in many reports and articles such as this, this and this and in three You Tubes here, here and…
– But, there is some help The Cincinnati Enquirer reports that astonishingly small numbers of students from the inner city “core,” including Covington and Newport, Kentucky, are ready for college. Only 11 percent of urban “core” kids tested out of remedial requirements at Northern Kentucky’s Gateway Community and Technical College. The good news for those…
The Lexington Herald-Leader reports that while our CATS assessments are officially dead, a group of die-hard CATS fans are going to publish their own CATS-like rating of our schools. Let’s talk about how silly that is. Our legislators took a hard look at things like our high college remediation rates and poor performance on federal…
– Why you can’t ignore racial demographics Over at the Prichard Committee’s Blog they have been busy posting all sorts of test results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Unfortunately, there is a consistent flaw in that effort – Prichard never tells its readers about the cautions in recent NAEP documents outlining how different…
– I guess eighth grade reading does not count A tip of the hat to Richard Day for reminding me that it had been a while since I last looked at one of the more inflated sets of claims about education progress in Kentucky – the Kentucky Department of Education Web site’s so-called “Proof of…
A great deal has been written lately about whether the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) achievement level score of “Basic” is a better target of comparison for state definitions of NCLB “Proficiency” than the NAEP’s own “Proficient” score. In fact, one of our anonymous readers has been asserting that “Basic” represents a better target…
– Some other Education Sites not posting my comments I’ve noticed of late that several of my comments have not been posted in either the Prichard Committee’s Blog or the Kentucky School News and Commentary Blog. I don’t know if there is a technical problem with those sites or not. I both agree and disagree…