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Redistricting debacle may spark transparency

Transparency and AccountabilityBy Jim Waters February 27, 2012

The redistricting debacle may have at least some type of positive effect: more transparency.

A bill was filed in the Kentucky House of Representatives that would require all future documents and maps related to congressional redistricting to be made available to the public for at least 5 days before the legislature votes on them. I like to see transparency involved in any proposed policy. The more time that information is available to the public, the easier it is to hold elected officials accountable.

Now if we can just get the state budget process in the same boat…

Taking liberty to the airwaves: BIPPS on the Mandy Connell Show

UncategorizedBy Jim Waters February 27, 2012

I will be hitting the airwaves today from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. (eastern) for another “Bluegrass Monday” segment on the Mandy Connell Show on Louisville’s 84WHAS

Don’t miss it!

Worried about Kentucky’s economic future? You should be

Reduce Government SpendingBy Jim Waters February 26, 2012

For the second straight year, Fitch has assigned Kentucky a less-than-stellar credit rating.

The global ratings agency has assigned Kentucky an “AA-” rating on revenue bonds that will be offered “through negotiation” on Wednesday.

Fitch Ratings has assigned a AA- credit rating to both $256 million worth of road revenue bonds and on $7.3 billion in “appropriation backed debt” by various Kentucky agencies. IOW: the cost of repairing roads and financing the commonwealth’s debt continues to be higher than it would be if policymakers would get spending under control.

“The Rating Outlook is Negative,” Business Wire reported.

Note: The best rating a bond can have is AAA. This means the bond has virtually no chance of defaulting. AA is one step below AAA. Then comes AA+, AA and AA- with AA+ being the best of the three. “Think of it like a grade in school – you can have B+, B and B-,” DaveManuel.com explains.

The primary reasons for the continued lower-than-ideal credit ratings are varied in detail but rest on two pillars: reduced “financial flexibility” and “demands of long-term liabilities, particularly the increasing needs of the employees retirement system.”

A bit of the Fletch analysis fleshed out:

*Unemployment rate: Kentucky’s 9.1 percent rate remains well above the national 8.5 percent jobless rate.

*Per capita personal income: Kentucky currently ranks “47th among the states.”

*Total net tax-supported debt: “approximates $9.1 billion, representing an above-average 6.5% of 2010 personal income.”

*Underfunded pension liability: The Kentucky Employees Retirement System was funded at only a 36.1 percent funding level as of June 30, 2011, down from a level of 97.3 percent level as of June 30, 2003.

…just another reason why it’s simply outrageous that — as we reported in the introduction to our current Future Shock series examining the public pension crisis that: “taxpayers are being forced to provide pensions to staff employees of the Kentucky Education Association (a private teachers’ union) and other private companies, including a credit union, several attorneys in private practice and not- for-profit organizations.”

Education commissioner outlines reasons why Kentucky is dropping readers for its reading tests

EducationBy Richard Innes February 25, 2012

Some of you who are not regular readers of this blog probably crossed your eyes over this headline.

“How can you read kids a reading test,” you probably asked yourselves.

Well, this is Kentucky, where just about every radical education fad has its day. Back in the early days of KERA, in the interests of getting all kids to take the state’s assessments, some misguided souls decided that readers could indeed be provided to learning disabled students for all our assessments, including the reading tests.

Over time, that bad policy led to a large proportion of our learning disabled students being provided readers for the reading assessments. These kids were only took a spoken word comprehension test – sometimes with lots of additional help like someone to write down their answers – but you couldn’t tell from the test scores. It wasn’t clearly mentioned in older reports from the Kentucky Department of Education, either.

Along the way, this terrible policy fostered a situation where schools didn’t have to make any attempt to teach thousands and thousands of Kentucky students to read and decode printed text. Meanwhile, the public was left in the dark about potentially large numbers of students who were simply not being given the opportunity to learn reading.

After two decades of this bad policy, the Kentucky Board of Education finally moved to call a halt; however, some misguided, or misinformed, individuals still are trying to keep the test score inflating readers on duty.

Read why Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday says the new policy is needed here.

Thursday’s Lexington Forum debate on ‘right to work’ features BIPPS vice chairman, Lexington attorney

Increase Free MarketsBy Jim Waters February 24, 2012

Warren Rogers, a Lexington businessman and vice chairman of the Bluegrass Institute board of directors, will debate attorney Richard Dawahare on the issue of right to work at Thursday’s meeting of the Lexington Forum.

The event will be held from 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. at the University of Kentucky’s Hillary J. Boone Center.

Kentucky is one of 27 states without a law protecting workers’ freedom by not forcing them to pay dues to a labor union as a condition for employment in a unionized company.

Past attempts to pass right-to-work laws in Kentucky have been stymied by labor unions and their influence over the political leadership in the Democratically controlled House.

Neighboring Indiana is the most recent state — and the first in the “Rust Belt” — to pass a right-to-work law.

Click here for more information on how you can attend Thursday’s meeting.

Kentucky’s education commissioner explains the new accountability system

EducationBy Richard Innes February 24, 2012

Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday provides a brief but interesting overview of Kentucky’s new public school assessment and accountability program in this Ledger-Independent article.

What remains to be seen is how well Kentucky’s new assessment and accountability program follows through on reducing the achievement gaps that have continued to plague the state for decades.

To that end, the US Department of Education issued a letter to Commissioner Holliday concerning the state’s recent receipt of a waiver from No Child Left Behind, which is also known as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). This letter concerns how Kentucky’s schools and Local Education Agencies (LEAs), which Kentucky refers to as school districts, will be monitored and expected to improve. That ‘US Ed’ letter, which came from Michael Yudin, Acting Assistant Secretary, says:

“The (US) Department will monitor Kentucky’s use of a combined subgroup to ensure that Kentucky continues to provide transparency with respect to the performance of individual ESEA subgroups and the implementation of Kentucky’s index to ensure that schools and LEAs with continued low subgroup performance are identified for appropriate interventions and supports.”

So, if Kentucky’s new program leaves minority and other special students behind (a major failing in our earlier CATS program), people in Washington say they are going to react.

We will be following the gap issue closely at the Bluegrass Institute, as well. While we see lots of improvement in Kentucky’s new assessment program (including a better, college and career focus in testing), we too are concerned that minority performance may or may not be adequately considered in the final, single school ranking the state’s new program will generate.

In any event, if problems do arise in the achievement gaps area, or if we can’t get access to the data to see if there is a problem, it sounds like the institute will have a lot of company in the corner crying foul.

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