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Outdated labor laws and an inferior education system offer a bleak forecast for Kentucky’s economic future.

Click here to listen to the 90-second audio commentary.

What is the Prichard Committee fussing about?

I finally have a moment to advise you that the webcasts of the Kentucky Board of Education retreat and meetings held on August 4 and 5 are now archived for viewing. You can access the webcasts in either full video or audio only (suggested for slower bandwidth connections) formats using these links:

8/4/2010: archived video and audio

8/4/2010: downloadable audio podcast

8/5/2010: archived video and audio

8/5/2010: downloadable audio podcast

Lisa Gross at the Kentucky Department of Education sent out the link to these webcasts early on August 6th, but I’ve been too busy to get this out to you.

Which leads to my surprise about a whiny comment the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence made in a blog post on the afternoon of August 6th.

Prichard fusses that the Kentucky Department of Education’s new strategic plan for education – discussed in detail at the board meeting – with a Power Point available on line from the department of education here – doesn’t have any public-friendly visuals.

Well, that’s silly.

I blogged about this lead visual days ago on August 5th, mentioning that more information would be coming.

You can find a lot more explanation of the plan in an hour and a half long, illustrated discussion included in the webcast from August 4th. That starts at 45 minutes and 35 seconds into the webcast if you don’t want to listen to the entire meeting. And, if Prichard had just checked the links in this blog from Education Commissioner Terry Holliday, they would have found the full Power Point presentation on the strategic plan that I mention, and link to, above, as well.

How much more user-friendly can you get about a plan that doesn’t lend itself to a trivialized, one-page description?

As a note, Prichard posted their fussy blog item at 3:45 PM on August 6th. The department of education sent out its links to the webcast at 8:09 AM on August 6th. Commissioner Holliday already had the link to the strategic plan Power Point in his blog that Prichard referenced to create their whiny post in the first place.

So what is really going on here? Could it be that Prichard is upset because they didn’t personally get a hand-holding, special briefing after they failed to show up for the board’s meetings?

Anyway, I think the education department has done a very nice job of getting the message out about the strategic plan, which, after all is said and done, may not boil down well into an overly simplistic, one page discussion.

We’ll look at some specifics from the strategic plan briefing in future posts.

As we mentioned earlier the Kentucky Legislature’s Interim Joint Committee on Education held hearings on August 9, 2010 on charter schools and what they might bring to the commonwealth.

We shot lots of video of the event, as did another blogger, and we will be posting those in the next couple of days.

In addition, the Bluegrass Institute also hosted a small roundtable discussion with several charter school experts

• Tracy McDaniel, president of the KIPP Reach College Preparatory School in Oklahoma City
• Kenneth Campbell, president of the Black Alliance for Educational Options

and several members of our coalition to bring charter schools to Kentucky, including:

• Jerry Stephenson, pastor of the Midwest Church of Christ in Louisville
• Jim Waters, vice president for Policy and Communications at the Bluegrass Institute
• Kelly Smith, Vice President for Strategic Partnerships at the Bluegrass Institute, and
• Myself, Richard Innes, Education Analyst for the Bluegrass Institute.

Some of the interesting answers to our questions from the charter school experts are available for you here.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE-hjS7Fn7k]

A state legislative oversight committee today voted to disapprove renewing the contract of the controversial Kentucky Climate Action Panel.

Click here to read the entire News Release.

Learn more about the Kentucky Climate Action Panel here.

Dr. Eric Schansberg discusses how he believes Milton Friedman would view the current economic climate.  This video was taken from the “What would Friedman do?” event at the University of Louisville, hosted by the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, on July 30, 2010.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=13897758&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=00ADEF&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0

Dr. Eric Schansberg – July 2010 from freedomky on Vimeo.

School choice supporters told state lawmakers today that charter schools offer the kind of innovation that could bring true reform to Kentucky’s education system.

Click here to read the entire News Release.