Taking the easy way out for all, the superintendent of Perry County Schools has submitted his retirement to the local board of education rather than face likely firing at a special meeting of the board. John Paul Amis headed the district when the ACT cheating scandal started to unfold several years ago. At one point…
by Jim Waters There is an upside to Kentucky’s budget crunch: It forces everyone from legislators to agency heads to school superintendents to get the most out of every buck mailed in by taxpayers. Lean budget times can also produce shining – and refreshing – examples of how some public servants refuse to make excuses…
One more thought came up after yesterday’s meeting of the Task Force on Student Access to Technology. While talking with Tim Maggard, the Hardin County Schools Director of Technology after the meeting, we discussed the fact that digital technology in the classroom may require an entire new set of defining terms. That includes possibly that…
We heard an awful lot of nonsense from the education community in the early days of KERA. They warned us that drill would only kill the urge to learn in our students. That turned out to be bad advice for math instruction, and it was bad for reading, too. In the specific area of reading…
The Kentucky Legislature’s Task Force on Student Access to Technology had a hearing today about the Kentucky Digital Textbook Project in the Hardin County School District. Tim Maggard, the district’s Director of Technology provided a really interesting “tour” of this project, which allows local teachers to harness technology to create their own digital learning modules…
The Courier-Journal reports in “JCPS moves up application period, gives less time to accept magnet school spots” that the limited school choice options for parents in Louisville are about to get another limitation – more limited time for parents to select from the few school choice options the school system allows them. In the future,…
Dr Steve Hutton of Beechwood Independent – Bang for the Buck 09/17/12 from Bluegrass Institute on Vimeo.
In the first two parts of this blog, I outlined compelling evidence about the extensive and probably excessive use of readers for Kentucky’s students with learning disabilities. These kids even get readers on the state’s reading assessments. That prevents education leaders and the public from knowing if any real effort is being expended to teach…
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…