Thanks to massive numbers of way out of line, clearly inflated scores for the new Program Review element in the 2014 Kentucky Unbridled Learning school accountability program, the accountability program’s overall scores are coming into question. From school superintendents to private citizens, I am seeing and hearing compelling evidence that the Program Reviews have a…
There was an interesting surprise during the public comment segment of the Kentucky Board of Education meeting on October 7, 2014. Donnie Wilkerson, a fifth-grade teacher at Jamestown Elementary School in Russell County, traveled to Frankfort on his own to share his deep concerns about proposed revisions to the state’s social studies education standards. Wilkerson’s comments make…
The new state assessment results were released last week, and while you’ve been reading claims of progress in the media, I have some reservations. I’ve been assembling information on how the new Kentucky Performance Rating for Educational Progress (KPREP) test results for math and reading compare to other testing results for Kentucky. KPREP math and…
A lot of creative thinking has gone into Kentucky’s still relatively new Unbridled Learning school accountability system. However, Unbridled Learning is also running up against some tough “facts of life” that sometimes interfere with the picture this program presents about school performance. Things might get even more problematic when the new Unbridled Learning results for…
Who will make decisions in the future? I was on a three-way talk show on WEKU 88.9 Radio last week when the subject of who created the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) came up. A highly placed official in our public education sector challenged me when I pointed out that not one person from Kentucky…
So, why did the Common Core fail to include any? Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday’s blog from last week, “Feedback is critical to success,” is on target. A good education system requires feedback between all the key players in the process: those who write the standards, those who create the curriculum, those who teach,…
A great example of how digital learning is opening new worlds for people with medical challenges showed up today in the Kentucky Forward news clips service. NKU professor Rebecca Bailey found herself at a crossroads several years ago. Her medical challenges took her out of her classroom at the university, and she wasn’t sure if…
A new lawsuit targeting one of the two national efforts to create Common Core State Standards tests has just been filed in Missouri. The suit relates to Missouri’s fiscal involvement with the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), one of two federally-funded groups that are working on assessments aligned to the Common Core. It reportedly alleges…
With a review of the Common Core State Standards implementation in Kentucky already under way, it looks like still more states are finding the need to either drop or, as in North Carolina, at least consider adjusting these controversial standards. These state-by-state efforts are going to take the “common” out of Common Core, of course.
Teachers starting to speak out in Kentucky No, I didn’t create the title for this blog. It comes from an article written by Jeff Jobe, editor of Jobe Publishing Company. This article ran in that firm’s multiple newspapers that that cover the Barren, Butler, Metcalfe, Monroe and Hart County areas. Examples include the Hart County…