Apparently, the expensive audit that the Jefferson County Board of Education commissioned to find problems in their school system didn’t have any difficulty finding some. WAVE-3 reports: “The question right now for JCPS – who is in charge?” “The audit found that some people are in charge of too many while in interviews other employees…
I have now had a chance to examine the change in Kentucky’s white minus black proficiency rate achievement gaps on National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) math and reading assessments. I assembled the percentages of whites and blacks scoring at or above NAEP’s “Proficient” score using the NAEP Data Explorer. I obtained data for the…
I knew the education crowd in Kentucky and elsewhere would not take long to jump on statistically insignificant score increases on the new National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) math and reading results to puff up unsupportable claims of progress. My first example out of the gate is the Kentucky Department of Education’s (KDE) news…
The National Assessment of Educational Progress just released the 2011 results for math and reading for all 50 states. Certainly, the 2011 reading and math results for Kentucky don’t look good. We already took a first look at reading. Now, let’s see what the new NAEP Math Report Card shows for the fourth and eighth…
The National Assessment of Educational Progress just released the 2011 results for math and reading for all 50 states. Certainly, the 2011 reading and math results for Kentucky don’t look good. Let’s look at reading first. In both forth and eighth grade reading, as these maps taken from the new NAEP Reading Report Card show,…
If charter schools not part of answer, then what is? Kentucky needs to find out The Louisiana Department of Education recently released its public school only analysis of ACT college entrance test scores for the graduating class of 2011. There is some remarkable data in this release for the ‘Recovery School District’ schools in the…
Could significantly undermine school focus on minority student performance A new news release says the Kentucky Department of Education is asking for a waiver from some key requirements in the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Despite some appropriate criticisms, this federal act, often simply referred to by its initials as NCLB, created…
Look on the list of nearly half of states that now use student test scores to evaluate teachers, and you will not find Kentucky. But you will find: * Four of Kentucky’s seven neighboring states among the 17 states and Washington, D.C. that use test scores as a meaningful factor in evaluating teachers. * Dennis…
An important Herald-Leader article on the problems with our under-funded public employee retirement programs indicates that investment returns for the Kentucky Teacher Retirement System (KTRS) under-performed investments made by the Kentucky Retirement Systems, which cover other state and local workers. Per the article, the Teacher Retirement System produced only a 4.8 percent return on investments…
There is no doubt. The federal No Child Left Behind law’s (NCLB) stringent focus on boosting educational achievement for all student groups – including minorities, the poor and those with learning disabilities – never sat well with educators. NCLB exposed a great embarrassment for educators. Our schools have not closed achievement gaps despite over 20…