I wrote a couple of days ago about an interesting back and forth that took place on Monday’s Kentucky Tonight show (which you can see by clicking the video link below). During the show, Kentucky Senator Gerald Neal kept pushing Maryland as having an exemplary charter school program with a law Kentucky should emulate. Towards…
During Monday’s Kentucky Tonight show about charter schools, some comments were made about Kentucky’s Districts of Innovation (DOI) program. Some anti-charter folks have tried to claim DOIs eliminate the need for charter schools, but secretary of the Education and Workforce Development Cabinet Hal Heiner quickly challenged that notion on the show. Most tellingly, Sec. Heiner…
KET’s Kentucky Tonight discussion on charter schools yesterday was nothing if not lively. With Kentucky’s Secretary of Education Hal Heiner and “Old Guard” Kentucky Senator Gerald Neal on the panel along with our own Jim Waters and executive director of the Kentucky Association of School Superintendents Tom Shelton, things were bound to be interesting. However,…
I didn’t make this up. The Collaborative for Student Success recently posted “The Results Are In: High Standards Are Leading to Better Outcomes.” It includes a national map showing states that supposedly are doing a more honest job of reporting student proficiency rates and annual testing. Here’s the map. Kentucky’s light gray shading doesn’t look…
During Monday’s Kentucky Board of Education meeting about charter schools, one presenter again pushed the idea that Kentucky has made great progress on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) since KERA began in 1990. But, the picture that got painted, which only referenced overall average NAEP scores, was incomplete and misleading. When you only…
It’s an unfortunate truth for Kentucky: despite more than a quarter of a century of aggressive education reform, achievement gaps continue to be a major problem. The situation is so dramatic that even a most enthusiastic cheerleader for traditional public education, the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, now candidly admits: “…far too many Kentucky students…
Education Week reports that the US Department of Education has launched an investigation of high school graduation rate claims in both Alabama and California. At issue are large high school graduation rates that have grown dramatically over time and don’t seem to match other data like the proportion of students who are considered college ready…
I have written a number of times such as here, here, here, here and even way back when here in our old blog about what I think is the most important finding in an ever growing series of reports on charter schools from The Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University. This…
In their new report, “2016 Statewide Results: An Excellence with Equity Report,” the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence now recognizes the value of a high school performance metric we introduced over a year ago. The Bluegrass Institute’s “Effective High School Graduation Rate,” has real value for helping to determine the performance of education systems in…
Heather Huddleston knows an important story, and she knows it better than almost anyone else in Kentucky. As the executive director of School Choice Scholarships, Heather works with kids the traditional public school system in Louisville just doesn’t serve well. Heather helps these kids get needs-based scholarships to attend private schools where these students regularly…