As an Air Force instructor pilot, Innes was a member of the initial cadre of program developers that introduced automated teaching technology into the Air Force's pilot training program in 1971. Innes developed courseware for this new technology using some of the same standards-based education theories now being applied to public education.

More recently, Innes' research in 1999 highlighted the nation-wide issue of increasing exclusion and accommodation of learning disabled students on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Cautions about those problems now are found in all recent reports from the national assessment, and extensive research in this area has been ongoing continuously since Innes' discovery.

Innes became a student of the Kentucky education reform in 1994, and he is the author of many articles and papers concerning the extensive problems with this reform with a special focus on the state's troubled public school assessments.

Innes also spent considerable time studying the problems of accurate dropout and graduation rate reporting in Kentucky. His testimony on this subject in 2003 led to an official 2006 audit of Kentucky's dropout rate statistics. That audit confirms Innes' contention that the state's officially reported data is untrustworthy.

As a graduate electrical engineer with both Bachelor's (Lehigh University, BA 1967 and BS Electrical Engineering 1968) and Master's degrees (Air Force Institute of Technology, MSEE, 1975), Innes understands analytical research and technical reporting.

Today he is the education analyst for the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, a free-market public policy think tank located in Bowling Green and Lexington, Kentucky. EdDataFromInnes.com

http://www.eddatafrominnes.com

Recent articles written by Richard G Innes

Virtual schooling in Kentucky: Great promise with challenges (Posted Sept. 1, 2010)
Rapid advances in computer-based technology create exciting new possibilities for the delivery of public education, including the opportunity to offer totally virtual, online courses through the Internet. [ Read More ]

Richard Innes on Education (Posted April 8, 2010)
Education analyst Richard Innes educates 'KentuckyGrassRoots' listeners on KERA, school choice and what's really happening in the commonwealth's public schools. [ Read More ]

Examining Kentucky's 'No Child Left Behind' Tier 5 Schools (Posted August 24, 2009)
Since its passage in late 2001, the “No Child Left Behind Act” (NCLB) has generated a huge amount of criticism from Kentucky’s professional educators. Critics say the act’s required academic targets are too high, especially for students with learning disabilities, and they have repeatedly said students face an impossible standard. [ Read More ]

MUNIS becomes a ‘minus’ without more support
MUNIS, the troubled financial system for Kentucky’s public-education bureaucracy, fails to gather needed data, deter criminals and provide needed security and privacy. [ Read More ]