In a real break with her own national leadership and many other state level teachers’ union organizations, the head of the Kentucky Education Association (KEA), Sharron Oxendine, is saying some very nice things about the Teach for America program (TFA). TFA is placing college graduates from some of the nation’s finest universities into K to…
Much of increase comes from AdvanceKentucky schools The Kentucky Department of Education just issued a news release about our high school students’ performance on the Advanced Placement tests. This table, taken from the release, tells some of the important story. Between 2008 and 2012 the number of individual students taking at least one AP exam…
It’s exactly what we wanted Richmond Register’s editor Bill Robinson took time yesterday to comment on some of the issues we raised in our new “Bang for the Buck 2012: How efficient are Kentucky’s schools” report. Robinson’s thoughtful comments about efficiency and spending priorities in Kentucky’s public schools are exactly the type of discussion we…
In yesterday’s Part 1 of this blog, I pointed out that high proportions of Kentucky’s students with learning disabilities are getting all tests, including the state’s reading tests read to them. As a consequence, we have no way to know if any effort is being expended to teach these students to really read. Why are…
Sunday Special Lead Article Too many Kentucky schools may be expending little, if any, effort to teach children with learning disabilities to read. At the same time, highly questionable testing practices provide an inflated picture of the true reading performance of students across the commonwealth. And, many Kentucky teachers are expending a tremendous amount of…
Our very own Jim Waters will be hosting a forum on charter schools and school choice tomorrow evening in Lexington, KY at the Imani Baptist Church. Pastor Polk will first screen Waiting for Superman before the forum, a film highlighting the story of five families looking to provide a better future for their children through…
In an era of Kentucky history where a stalled economy is not likely to produce additional resources for our failing public school system, education leaders in the commonwealth now have no choice but to do what they should have been “shooting” for all along: increasing the bang for the buck for Kentucky school children. Blaming…
On the heels of the release of our “Bang for the Buck” report, this past week Pastor Jerry Stephenson and the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO) hosted a screening of the film, Waiting for Superman, with stimulating conversation to follow. The BAEO has long been a proponent of school choice in Kentucky, one of only ten…
As I earlier mentioned the now infamous teacher strike in Chicago didn’t impact the charter schools there, which enroll many thousands of students. It was school as usual for charter school students while chaos reigned in the traditional public schools. The strike has renewed interest in charter schools in Chicago. Over at the J. P.…
WFPL Radio reports that heavy campaign funding by Kentucky’s teachers’ unions is drawing some opposition. Campaign finance records obtained by the Bluegrass Institute show that the Jefferson County Teachers Association sometimes has spent more than $100,000 in “Independent Expenditures” to support individual candidates that union favored in past school board races. It is difficult to…