Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is talking about education, and the performance of Florida education under his administration certainly merits attention. A quick look at the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data for Kentucky and Florida shows some amazing progress has been made in Mr. Bush’s state. For example, the graph below shows that…
It surprised Alex Chernyakhovsky. He was looking at a way to predict how the bird flu epidemic of 2006 spread when he discovered, “The World Health Organization didn’t have any predictive programs; it was all reactive,” Alex says. “I couldn’t figure out how they were planning on preventing something they couldn’t predict.” So, Alex got…
Go figure! We can’t get a charter school law in Kentucky, but the rest of the world is now following the trend in the 40 more educationally advanced states in the USA that have charter schools – and going charter too! Check it out in Education Week (Subscription). This sure is a funny way for…
My previous post about the US Secretary of Education pushing California to raise taxes gave me an idea. When the private sector faces economically tough times, they really work on efficiency of operations. I wondered if terms like “efficiency” and “efficient” were showing up in recent news releases from Washington and Frankfort educators. I started…
– We can’t afford more – But, we do deserve better facts Several days ago, California voters rejected further hikes in school taxes. Considering the especially severe economic situation out there, with things like house values and overall personal wealth plummeting, that isn’t hard to understand – unless you are an educator – even the…
– Former School Board Member Calls for Transparency It’s an area where Kentucky has a long way to go. Do you know how much your school district spends on your own child’s bus route compared to other routes? How about the cost to heat your child’s school versus that of other schools in the district?…
Kentuckians and their policy makers have been inundated over the past few years with all sorts of figures about how many kids actually graduate in Kentucky. Unfortunately, because Kentucky doesn’t have high quality graduation rate data – and won’t get that until 2015 or so under current plans – a bunch of different formulas are…
– Almost 75 percent fail licensing test in Massachusetts – And, Massachusetts has one of the best education programs in the country! The Boston Globe reports that nearly three out of four aspiring elementary school teachers failed the new math section of the Massachusetts teacher licensing examination. Says the Globe, “Education leaders said the high…
This new report from Greg Forster and Christian D’Andrea analyzes responses to an annual survey run by the US Department of Education. Some of the findings are remarkable. For example: – “Private school teachers are much more likely to say they will continue teaching as long as they are able (62 percent v. 44 percent),…
I blogged yesterday on the new formula the Kentucky Department of Education is going to use to calculate high school graduation rates. It is similar to a formula called the Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate which was developed some time ago by the US Department of Education. There are actually data available to calculate the AFGR…