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I wrote a few days ago about a new federal report that examines White to Black achievement gaps on the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). That blog and the referenced report show White to Black achievement gaps in Kentucky have grown since KERA began.

Now, I have taken the data in the report and done my own analysis – this time looking at White to White and Black to Black gaps between Kentucky and the national averages. Here is one of the more disturbing graphs from that study.

The gap between Kentucky’s White NAEP score and the national average score for all Whites is shown by the yellow bars. Notice that the gap way back in 1992 is equal to the gap in 2007 – in other words, we lag the nation just as badly as we did back in the beginning of KERA.

Things get ugly when we consider how our Blacks have performed, unfortunately. Our Blacks have gone from scoring eight points above the national Black average to scoring three points below it.

Once you realize that Blacks across the nation score 27 points below the national White average, you begin to understand how incredibly bad this is for Kentucky’s Black students.

KERA promised to solve our achievement gap problems. At this point, we have to realize that promise remains badly unfulfilled, if not actually broken.

For more on this serious situation, see the new freedomkentucky.org Wiki item on “Achievement Gaps for Kentucky Since KERA Began.”

– But doesn’t deserve special praise for saying it will do so

A recent report from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) says, “The University of Louisville in Kentucky is a very competitive public research university” (Page 18).

That’s because U of L attracts high caliber students who should enjoy significant success in college.

But, lots of undergraduate college success isn’t happening at U of L.

The AEI’s report says that only 44 percent of entering freshmen graduate from U of L within six years. AEI says this is one of the very worst rates among any of the comparable research universities in the South.

That’s why I was a bit taken aback today to find that over at the Prichard Blog, Susan Weston is praising the University of Louisville for saying it will increase its college graduation rate.

There is no question that U of L needs to get its graduation house in order, but the university should already have a much better graduation rate than it does.

In fact, it is high time U of L made good on the investment Kentuckians and aspiring college freshmen have made in the school for a very long time.

Over the past week and a half I posted several items about special education in Kentucky, including:

“Special education: for boys only?” and “Special education in Kentucky – Who pays?”

Now, let’s look at how the money doesn’t always go where it is needed.

The graph below was presented to the Kentucky legislature’s Interim Joint Committee on Education’s “road show meeting” at Midway College on July 13, 2009.

This graph shows the ratio of special education expenditures to the state and federal special education revenues the school districts in Kentucky received. Data for Fiscal Years 2003 to 2007 are included.

The graph does not show data for individual districts. Instead, the graph divides the districts into five separate groups, or quintiles, according to the assessed private property values in each district. Information for the group of districts with the lowest 20 percent of property wealth, the first quintile, is shown by the first set of bars on the left of the graph. The data for the state’s wealthiest districts, the fifth wealth quintile, are shown by the set of bars on the far right.

An important feature of the graph is the horizontal red line, marked as the “Expenditures = Revenues” line. If a ratio bar for a given year falls below the line, then the related group of districts received more money for special education students than they actually spend on special education services. On the other hand, districts that received inadequate funding from state and federal sources had to make up the difference in local tax dollars and the bar extends above the red “Expenditures = Revenues” line.

Several things are apparent in the graph. First of all, the costs of special education are growing everywhere. According to page 104 in the companion report to the slide presentation revenue for special education in Kentucky grew from $408 million in FY 2003 to $539 million by FY 2007, which is a 32 percent jump.

Perhaps even more important, the graph above makes it clear that the revenues are not being distributed properly. Poor wealth districts get more than they need while wealthy districts are being underfunded.

That creates unsatisfactory temptations. Once a district gets its special education funding from the state and the federal government, if the money isn’t all spent on special education services, there is no requirement to return the surplus. Thus, Kentucky’s poor wealth districts actually get a “profit center” effect from their special education programs, while special education students in the wealthy districts are an extra cost burden for local taxpayers.

Worse, money that should be fenced to support special education students winds up in the general fund of Kentucky’s poorest districts instead. As such, this money acts as a stimulus for the low wealth schools to label even more kids as disabled when the truth may be that these kids are just being badly served in regular classrooms.

It’s a bad system; one that excessively burdens taxpayers with a bait and switch ploy while tending to overload schools with kids who are identified as disabled. That, in turn tends to reduce the real assistance given to kids that really are learning disabled, which drags the entire process down.

Kentucky officials want out of a requirement by US Education Secretary Arne Duncan that states must allow charter schools in order to get in line for stimulus funds being released this fall. Commentator Jim Waters reveals why in this latest edition of the Bluegrass Audio.

Click here to listen to the commentary.

The title of this entry is the same as that of a column written a few years ago by Walter Williams.

While the column is dated, the principles it espouses are timeless.

A worthy exercise would be to read Williams’ column in light of all the attempts by today’s health nannies to protect us from ourselves through policies that trample on individual liberties and private-property rights. Examples that come to mind: government-imposed smoking bans and the banning of the use of trans fats by restaurants.

Williams clears the air on this issue when he writes: “In a free society, government has the responsibility of protecting us from others, but not from ourselves.”

Government can pickpocket the taxpayer to pay for lavish hotel rooms and high-priced escorts at night and then undercut the private-sector insurance rates during the day.

Click here to read entire column.