Kentucky has completed its fourth year of testing with Common-Core-State-Standards-aligned Kentucky Performance Rating for Educational Progress (KPREP) tests in reading and mathematics. Because inflation in the state’s earlier reform test programs – the first one known as KIRIS and the second as the CATS Kentucky Core Content Tests – proved problematic, it is time to…
On Nov. 9 the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) made a presentation to the state legislature’s Elementary and Secondary Education Committee about how standards, curriculum and testing are supposedly created in Kentucky. The presentation was highly problematic. Two flow charts used in that presentation, “Implementation of New Standards” and the “Academic Standards Development Process” (both…
The Courier-Journal ran an Op-Ed a couple of days ago about “Why teachers embrace Kentucky science standards.” It was written by a teacher from Boyd County. The article says “Boyd County serves as a model – and hopefully a catalyst – for other district and school leaders.” If so, we might be in trouble. Boyd…
Rep. Derrick Graham, D-Frankfort, chairman of the Kentucky House of Representative’s Education Committee and co-chairman of the Interim Joint Committee on Education, is worried. Graham addressed his concerns about the Bluegrass State’s chronic education-achievement gaps to colleagues during the Nov. 17 meeting of the Kentucky Legislature’s Education Assessment and Accountability Review Subcommittee. Graham says the legislature…
Fox News has picked up a story we started here some time ago. It is a serious question: Does Common Core hurt minority students the most?
Education Week just published a major article about the results of Common Core testing in all the states 2015. Except: They didn’t post Kentucky’s 2015 results even though the scores were publicly released over six weeks ago on October 1, 2015. I wonder why the Bluegrass State’s 2015 results never made it to EdWeek. Maybe…
One of the major limitations with the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the sampling error in all the scores. These errors can become quite large when we examine performance for smaller student groups such as black students in charter schools versus blacks in non-charters in the same school jurisdiction. But, if enough students…
During this past Monday’s meeting of the Kentucky Legislature’s Interim Joint Committee on Education there was interest in the state’s minority achievement gap problems. I decided to provide a key legislator with some information that I realized our blog readers deserved to see, as well. So, here are two tables I put together showing the…
In case you missed it, the Courier-Journal recently published my Op-Ed about “State school board needs open meetings lesson” regarding an on-going problem with the Kentucky Board of Education choosing to ignore an official Open Meetings Decision from the Kentucky Attorney General. That official decision says a state school board committee formed to help find…
Kentucky was the first state in the nation to adopt the Common Core State Standards, doing so in February of 2010, nearly four months before the standards were even complete. Kentucky was also the first state to really force Common Core into its classrooms; it did so by initiating Common Core aligned testing in reading…