Education Week is reporting (subscription?) that US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is really unhappy about major cheating scandals on state assessments unfolding in Atlanta and Washington DC. EdWeek says the feds are now talking about creating anti-cheating rules states will have to follow with their assessment programs to keep a watch for cheating. Getting…
At first blush, it doesn’t seem to make sense. Shouldn’t giving teachers more on the job training, called “Professional Development” (PD) in education circles, create better education programs? Apparently, a new federally sponsored student concludes the answer is: NO, at least for seventh grade mathematics teachers. The study was conducted by the American Institutes for…
While Kentucky doesn’t even have a formal process to follow for revoking teaching certificates for poor performance and firing a teacher is a long and drawn out affair, in Washington, DC, they are getting serious about getting low-performing teachers out of the classroom. The Washington Post reports that more than 200 teachers were just fired…
Taking a cue from other large cities like New York and San Diego, Kentucky Senate President/Candidate for Governor David Williams is calling for a shut down of the Jefferson County Board of Education and transfer of power over schools to the mayor of Louisville. It’s a dramatic proposal, but something better needs to happen in…
Reason Online makes some good points in this article about teachers making excuses for cheating to hide problems with status quo education.
I was on the road when the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce held its annual conference, but a post in the chamber’s blog concerning an education discussion is worth a look. It was a three-way panel with former US Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, international education consultant Sir Michael Barber, and Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry…
Kentucky not immune Fox News reports that there is a disturbing rise in school staff and teachers cheating on tests their students take. Even US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is “stunned.” And, don’t think that cheating is just happening elsewhere. Right here in Perry County, Kentucky a district-wide cheating scandal on the ACT is…
Senate President and GOP gubernatorial nominee David Williams is proposing eliminating the Jefferson County Board of Education and placing the state’s largest school district under the control of the Louisville mayor. It’s a new idea for Kentucky that is already being done elsewhere – including New York City, which has seen significant academic improvement since…
I wrote yesterday about some pretty bad analysis of education performance in a new report from a group at UK. Today, I stumbled across more of the same in the Prichard Committee’s blog. This time, it’s a fiction that Kentucky captures most of its high school dropouts accurately. Don’t believe it! Prichard simplistically looks at…
Surprise: UK’s economists are pushing the latest fairy tales The Lexington Herald-Leader just announced a reincarnation of a totally bogus education ranking system originally fabricated by the Kentucky Long Term Policy Research Center (KLTPRC). According to the article, the ‘new’ rankings are loaded with many of the very same statistical gaffs we found in the…