A new bill to bring charter schools to Kentucky, Senate Bill 253, was passed in a nine-to-two vote by the Kentucky Legislature’s Education Committee yesterday amidst expected union pushback and an amazingly frank charge from Hal Heiner, Kentucky’s Secretary of Education, that the Kentucky Education Association is standing in the way of the best policies…
We hear a lot today about how student-centered instructional approaches are get primary emphasis in our classrooms today as a result of Common Core State Standards. Things like problem solving group work and higher order thinking skills development are all the rage. But, do all those current education ideas really work well? For all kids?…
The Courier-Journal is reporting that the Jefferson County Public School District (JCPS) very seriously under-reported the number of incidents where students were restrained or secluded in its schools last year. The Courier says this data is required to be reported by state regulation. Making things more uncomfortable, the article says that the Kentucky Department of…
They need to be worried The Courier-Journal reports that the Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) board of education is conducting meetings today with a goal of doing something better for the district’s many troubled middle schools. Another article linked out of this current one reminded me that the JCPS board had voted to close the…
As I wrote yesterday, it wasn’t long after the Bluegrass Institute released our new report on “Blacks Continue Falling Through the Gaps in Louisville’s Schools, the 2016 Update” before the Jefferson County Public School District (JCPS) honored us with a response. In fact, the JCPS Response came out only a few hours after our report…
It wasn’t long after the Bluegrass Institute released our new report on “Blacks Continue Falling Through the Gaps in Louisville’s Schools, the 2016 Update” before the Jefferson County Public School District (JCPS) honored us with a response. In fact, the JCPS Response came out only a few hours after our report release news conference ended…
In this recent op-ed published by Louisville’s WLKY-TV as part of a series on public charter schools, Bluegrass Institute president Jim Waters describes these schools as: public, publicly funded, unique, open, inclusive, accountable, autonomous, voluntary, diverse and successful. See WLKY reporter Ben Jackey’s two-part series on charter schools.
The above is the headline in the Louisville Courier-Journal’s recent article reporting on the latest developments in the school-busing mess in the Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS). It’s hard to determine the seriousness of problems if important data isn’t included in the records that supervisors use to evaluate them. Apparently, as C-J reporter Allison Ross discovered, a whole…
It’s no secret. Our kids don’t know much about US history – or civics, either. The NAEP Data Explorer online tool reveals that only 23 percent of the nation’s high school seniors scored at or above proficient on the last NAEP civics test in 2010. Back in 2006, 26 percent were proficient. The drop was…
The Bluegrass Institute released “Blacks Continue Falling Through Gaps: The 2016 Update” on Monday. Here’s the video of the press conference.