“We can’t fix STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) without fixing K-12 education.“ –Joe Kelin, CEO, Educational Division of News Corporation and former Chancellor of NYC Department of Education
Kentucky remains one of 10 states without a law allowing charter schools, “and I think we’re probably going to remain one of the states without charter schools,” Carl Rollins, D-Midway, recently stated on KET’s “Kentucky Tonight” program.
Rollins claims that nobody has convinced him that charter schools “are really going to help us make progress.”
Yet why is it that 41 other states and the District of Columbia — including six of seven of Kentucky’s neighboring states — allow charter schools while 43 other states have some type of school choice law. Kentucky has neither.
States without a charter school law: Kentucky, Washington, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Alabama, West Virginia, Vermont and Maine.
States with no school choice law: Kentucky, Washington, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Alabama and West Virginia.
Gov. Beshear claims his administration saved $86 million in Medicaid efficiencies last year. Enquiring Kentucky minds want to know: Where’s the proof?
Click here to read the latest Bluegrass Bullet.
The new Digest of Education Statistics 2010 recently released, and there is sobering news for Kentucky in Table 112.
The latest Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate (AFGR) for Kentucky sank again for the second year in a row (click on graph to enlarge).
Based on this latest available data from the feds, Kentucky’s AFGR slipped back below the national average rate for the first time since 2004-05.
As a note, the ‘official’ 2007-08 high school graduation rate reported by the Kentucky Department of Education was 84.52 percent, over 10 points higher than the 74.4 percent rate the feds say we really had.
By the way, the Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate calculation was carefully researched by the National Center for Education Statistics after No Child Left Behind required states to report high school graduation rates. Most states, as Kentucky did, chose to use highly inflated calculations that masked the true dropout situation.
Starting this summer, Kentucky is being forced to start using the more accurate AFGR formula. The graph above provides clues as to why our state’s education leaders had to be forced to do this.
Having failed to get its radical anti-fossil fuels agenda passed through legislative means, the EPA is using regulation to bypass the will of the people and enact — and enforce — measures that will bring great harm to Kentucky’s coal industry and its economy.
Click here to read the latest Bluegrass Beacon.
“If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves.” –“A Nation at Risk”
