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The Times Tribune reports that Kentucky State Representative Brad Montell (R-Shelbyville) plans to file another charter school bill during the current legislative session.

This one is to be scaled down in scope from his earlier bill. It will establish a pilot program of up to 20 charter schools so Kentucky can get its feet wet with these innovative public school choice options in an orderly manner.

The pilot will run for five years and then be re-evaluated.

Private-sector firms in the U.S. eliminated 22,000 jobs in January — the 24th decline in a row according to Automatic Data Processing Inc.

From time to time we come across great examples of responsible and respectful government actions. In these times we want to make sure that we highlight actions by the government that model what the constitutions of both the United States and the Commonwealth of Kentucky originally intended.

We have created a section of FreedomKentucky.org designed to highlight these actions.  We are encouraging everyone to participate in sharing their experiences of responsible government.  Why?  Because in addition to pointing out what is wrong with government we need to also provide examples what we want to see!

This new page also features a great new tool that we are using at FreedomKentucky.org.  We will be analyzing government actions.  The criteria we will be using will be: Are the actions:

• Constitutional?
• Efficient?
• Have ownership?
• Reduce the size of government?
• Transparent?

Visit the Government Acting Responsibly portal and learn how you can become a part!

The saga of the UK housing debacle continues.  On Monday, Lexington mayor Jim Newberry held a forum about the housing situation around the campus.  He invited landlords, city council members, and the student body president to discuss the proposed zoning laws that would restrict the rights of private property owners in Lexington.

The amazing thing: According to a local neighborhood association leader in attendance, Newberry stated that he wanted to be the sole source of contact for the media regarding this issue.

Really? Seems to me that the property owners have more at stake here.  Why would a mayor want to have sole access to the media on an issue that he has been very vocal about…hmm…

Alabama joins the growing group of states that now have high quality student tracking systems that can support the US Department of Education’s Cohort Graduation Rate calculation.

As is usual when states get honest, the graduation rate plummets. Under its old formula, Alabama claimed a high school graduation rate of 86 percent. One year later, using the new formula, the 2009 rate dropped 21 points to only 65 percent.

By the way, I checked the most recently available graduation rate for Alabama using the Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate (AFGR) calculation that Kentucky could use right now, and which the Bluegrass Institute is already using.

In 2006-07 Alabama had an AFGR of 67.1 percent, which is pretty close to the actual rate of 65 percent the state just posted. In fact, the two-point difference agrees well with earlier federal studies that show the AFGR slightly over-reports the true rate.

The Kentucky Department of Education currently claims the fiction that our high school graduation rate is 84 percent for 2007, remarkably close to Alabama’s old fiction.

The US Department of Education shows our AFGR was 76.4 percent in 2006-07. Based on the federal research and Alabama’s experience, I estimate our true rate was probably around 74 percent, nearly 10 points lower than officially reported.

So, we didn’t mislead as badly as Alabama did, but we are being a lot slower about getting honest about it.