A new report from the Brookings Institution indicates that vouchers in New York City that allowed African-Americans to attend private schools resulted in increased college attendance at more upscale schools. The study found: “…that using a voucher to attend private school increased the overall college enrollment rate among African Americans by 24 percent.” Interestingly, vouchers…
Action in Adair County High School provides yet another example of how parents and local taxpayers lost control in their schools when the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990 created the School Based Decision Making Councils (SBDM) to rule our schools. In this case, the fight was over a plan to eliminate an agricultural teaching…
I’ve pointed out before that in this day of rapidly changing student demographics, any decent comparison of testing data from state to state requires us to look at scores disaggregated by race. That is true for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (Harvard researchers, are you listening?) and for the ACT, as well. In addition,…
Gaps in the ACT Composite Score grew for whites versus African-Americans and for males versus females for the High School Class of 2012. This table shows the data for the past two years. In 2011 African-Americans trailed white scores by 3.2 points. This year’s graduates increased that difference to a 3.3 point spread. In 2011…
One of the more cautionary messages in the new report package from the ACT, Inc. about the Kentucky High School Class of 2012 involves the very large number of graduates who scored far below the ACT Benchmark Scores that show which students are on track to pass their first college courses. This graph, taken from…
The ACT scores for the Class of 2012 were released today. There is some good news for Kentucky. The overall ACT Composite Score for all Kentucky students, including both public schools and students from other educational programs like home school and private schools, have edged up again for the second time since 2010. What makes…
The Courier-Journal issued a story today titled, “ACT scores remain unchanged from 2011.” That is correct for the nationwide ACT results, but Kentucky’s scores actually improved. In fact, as I will report at 9 AM Eastern time this morning in this blog, the ACT Composite Score for Kentucky rose from 19.6 in 2011 to 19.8…
The current fight in Kentucky about trying to get a handle on the apparently excessive number of students with learning disabilities who get reading tests read to them has now spilled over into the federal arena. Education Week reports that there is a dispute between two agencies that control the federal National Assessment of Educational…
There is a contentious battle under way about how Kentucky teaches students with learning disabilities to read – or not. This includes sharp dissention over what seems to be excessive use of readers on the state’s so-called reading assessments for these special students. Believe it or not, each year thousands of Kentucky students have the…
Non-readers are getting regular high school diplomas A disturbing issue inadvertently came to light during a contentious August 14, 2012 meeting of the Kentucky Legislature’s Education Assessment and Accountability Review Subcommittee (EAARS). The news spilled out during a sharp discussion about a regulation that would end reading of the state’s reading assessment to many students…