I have been writing a lot about some obvious indications that quality control for Kentucky’s public high school diploma needs serious work. Whether we are talking about an analysis of college and career ready indicators or another analysis based on the fact that Kentucky regulation 704 KAR 3:305, Minimum requirements for high school graduation, requires…
NC choices especially help African-American males Unlike Kentucky, North Carolina already has some great school choice options for low-income students including a charter school system. Thanks to those options, that state now has evidence that especially for African-American males, schools of choice are proving far more successful at overcoming significant achievement gaps faced by these…
Sounding more like a BIPPS scholar than a member of the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, Prichard analyst Susan Perkins Westin just had a rather interesting Op-Ed published in the Lexington Herald-Leader. She points out that a bill passed in 2002 to address the achievement gaps situation in Kentucky’s public schools has been largely ignored…
WKMS public broadcast radio from Murray State University says that Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin is calling for charter school legislation for the Bluegrass State in 2017. And, it looks like Kentucky could get financial help to establish charters from the federal government. Even the Prichard Committee admits that Kentucky’s chronic achievement gaps continue after more…
I’ve recently been writing about a highly problematic report from Johns Hopkins University titled “For All Kids, How Kentucky is Closing the High School Graduation Gap for Low-Income Students.” The Hopkins report has many problems, but the biggest issue is fundamental. The report assumes that diplomas awarded in different states require the same level of…
As Kentucky’s education leaders debate education reforms again, a thought-provoking article in the Denver Post is worth consideration. In “If educators don’t buy in, education reform fails” author Dick Hilker points to an obvious history of remarkable resistance within the nation’s education system to making substantial changes. Although there have been massive efforts at education…
It took a lot of questioning and independent research, but the authors of a recent report from Johns Hopkins University called “For All Kids, How Kentucky is Closing the High School Graduation Gap for Low-Income Students” finally admitted – only after we collected some rather compelling evidence – that they altered high school graduation rate…
Hillary Clinton supported charter schools before being endorsed by the big teachers’ unions and receiving access to their cash and get-out-the-vote efforts. Clinton wrote in her memoir “It Takes a Village” that she favors “promoting choice among public schools,” while later claiming “charter schools are a way of bringing teachers and parents and communities together.”…
We have written several times in the last month (here, here, here and here) about a recent report from Johns Hopkins University titled “For All Kids, How Kentucky is Closing the High School Graduation Gap for Low-Income Students.” It appears Hopkins is starting to listen – a little. After Hopkins and GradNation ran a webinar…
One of the most confusing things for the Kentucky public to understand about results from the ACT college entrance test is what do the scores really mean. So, in this blog we will first look at how the scores are reported and then take a look at how Kentucky’s public school students are doing with…