Editor’s note: The Bluegrass Beacon is a weekly syndicated statewide newspaper column posted on the Bluegrass Institute’s website after being released to and published by newspapers statewide. The animosity shown by certain groups within the public-education sector toward Gov. Bevin and the legislature’s Republicans regarding their efforts at reforming the commonwealth’s ailing public pension systems…
Editor’s note: The Bluegrass Beacon is a weekly syndicated statewide newspaper column posted on the Bluegrass Institute’s website after being released to and published by newspapers statewide. It’s hard to reconcile public radio’s assertion that this year’s Fancy Farm event in western Kentucky was “the Super Bowl of Kentucky politics” with the fact that some…
Editor’s note: The Bluegrass Beacon is a weekly syndicated statewide newspaper column posted on the Bluegrass Institute’s website after being released to and published by newspapers statewide. Following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, state education leaders in Louisiana decided to take over and rebuild the shattered New Orleans public school infrastructure using charter…
Editor’s note: The Bluegrass Beacon is a weekly syndicated statewide newspaper column posted on the Bluegrass Institute’s website after being released to and published by newspapers statewide. What led to Franklin Circuit Judge Thomas Wingate’s ruling supporting the Bluegrass Institute Center for Open Government’s claim that the Kentucky House of Representatives held an illegal closed-door…
Editor’s note: The Bluegrass Beacon is a weekly syndicated statewide newspaper column posted on the Bluegrass Institute’s website after being released to and published by newspapers statewide. Those who’ve convinced themselves that teachers’ union contracts don’t affect how flexible, innovative and ultimately successful school districts are in educating future generations also likely believe Russia colluded…
Editor’s note: The Bluegrass Beacon is a weekly syndicated statewide newspaper column posted on the Bluegrass Institute’s website after being released to and published by newspapers statewide. If it wasn’t obvious before, then recent reports of very young children being abused in the Jefferson County Public Schools’ Head Start program absolutely must seal the deal…
Editor’s note: The Bluegrass Beacon is a weekly syndicated statewide newspaper column posted on the Bluegrass Institute’s website after being released to and published by newspapers statewide. Implementation of Gov. Matt Bevin’s most consequential reform – requiring able-bodied adult Medicaid recipients to have “skin in the game,” as the governor famously stated and which resulted…
Editor’s note: The Bluegrass Beacon is a weekly syndicated statewide newspaper column posted on the Bluegrass Institute website after being released to and published by newspapers statewide. During the raging debate in recent years about whether Kentucky would join America’s education civilization by allowing charter schools, Ohio’s dismal charter performance became a favorite whipping boy…
Editor’s note: The Bluegrass Beacon is a weekly syndicated statewide newspaper column posted on the Bluegrass Institute website after being released to and published by newspapers statewide. It’s often the coach who gets forced out even though it’s the players who lose games. Sometimes education commissioners resign under pressure, as Stephen Pruitt did, even though…
In the closing days of this year’s session of the Kentucky General Assembly, the Republican-dominated legislature overrode Gov. Matt Bevin’s vetoes of its budget – which proposed spending $600 million more than the governor’s plan – and a mammoth tax increase to fund it. Meanwhile, on the other side of the political aisle, Democratic Attorney…