Over at the Kentucky School News & Commentary Blog, Penny Sanders, one of the really great personalities on the Kentucky education scene, just posted her analysis of what went on during before and during the debate and passage of Senate Bill 1. Penny is a real straight-shooter who knows a whole lot about education and…
– Again There is a great opinion piece by Peter Berger in the April 8th Education Week (subscription may be required). He points out a number of problems with education reform, including that reformers keep on reinventing the same old stuff. Berger’s piece is populated by gems like, …education reformers exploit the refrain “21st century,”…
Four days after I posted the new information from the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE) about Kentucky’s continuing high levels of college remedial requirements, Susan Weston at the Prichard Blog got around to mentioning it. Her take, not surprisingly, is different from mine. She says that “we have progress, but not enough progress.” I…
Last week, the Education Week newspaper’s print edition headline story (subscription) dealt with some real surprises. These surprises came from the latest, experimentally-based studies from the US Institute of Education Sciences (IES), which is part of the US Department of Education. Quite simply, once scientific split-sample testing of different education programs is conducted, most of…
According to the New York Times, US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is going to require states to supply more education data to the federal government if they want to wallow at the trough of the second round of education stimulus package money later this year. The Times says this “…is likely to reveal that…
– Maybe! More and more, people in Kentucky are being bombarded by all sorts of claims about Kentucky’s educational progress in the federal testing program known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Unfortunately, a lot of those reports are based on simplistic analysis of NAEP scores, analysis that ignores (to the point of…
– And, the CATS assessments definitely needed to go The Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education’s (CPE) research arm just sent me new data on the remediation requirements for students who entered college in Kentucky in the fall of 2006. This adds to earlier information from the CPE, which only covered 2002 and 2004. Here is…
– The CATS accountability program was going to leave kids behind The Bluegrass Institute has pointed out for some time such as here and here and in our four-part You Tube series: Does Kentucky’s CATS Assessment Require Proficiency Pt 1 Does Kentucky’s CATS Assessment Require Proficiency Pt 2 Does Kentucky’s CATS Assessment Require Proficiency Pt…
We’ve been covering the teething problems with the Kentucky Department of Education’s new computer support program for schools (see here, here, here and here) for some time. The first version, known as STI, failed some time ago. The replacement, known as Infinite Campus, has just now become operational in all school districts – more or…
– Sort of The Kentucky Board of Education launched a new Public Comments Segment in its meeting today, but this decent idea needs more thought. The rules published in the meeting agenda said those desiring to speak had to sign up before the meeting began. Since this meeting start was at 8:30 AM, anyone who…