There was a lot of hoopla several years ago when teachers union supporters in the Kentucky General Assembly passed an anti-charter school, bait-and-switch bill to create “Districts of Innovation” instead (House Bill 37, enacted 2012). At that time, supporters of the bill claimed it would do just about everything good that charter schools were doing…
The Black Alliance for Educational Options and the Kentucky Charter School Association will host Town Hall meetings next week in Lexington and Louisville about how Kentucky could close its achievement gaps. Part of the answer includes creating charter schools in the Bluegrass State, and experts will be on hand to explain how that could work.…
Less than a month after I posted my first blog critical of Kentucky’s plan to revise the state’s social studies standards, the Kentucky Department of Education has issued a news release announcing the process to change the state’s social studies standards is on hold until the public had a chance to provide input! According to…
Regular readers know that I am concerned about a very inadequate proposal to revise Kentucky’s social studies standards. As Kentucky’s 2011 History Teacher of the Year Donnie Wilkerson points out, the proposed social studies standards are “devoid” of any substantive content. Numerous important things we would want all Kentucky children to know about, such as…
The Sentinel-News from Shelby County reports that Shelby County schools Director of Finance Greg Murphy has stepped down from his position in the latest development following the discovery of the embezzlement of nearly $600,000 from the school district’s substitute teacher funds. The newspaper also reports that the person charged in this case, Benita Anglin, appeared…
A WHOLE LOT! I’ve been looking through the state’s current Kentucky Core Academic Standards for social studies (online in this document along with all the other subject standards). I wanted to see what material currently required statewide in social studies courses isn’t even mentioned in the draft proposed standards that were presented to the Kentucky…
Most white-black math and reading gaps are up statewide, as well According to comments in an October 28, 2014 Herald-Leader article, “Fayette school board approves recommendations to eliminate achievement gap,” the Fayette County Public School District’s newest Equity Scorecard showed, “…the achievement gap had widened, with lower numbers of distinguished and proficient students on the…
WDRB reports that former Louisville Male High School principal David Mike has now been fired for “conduct unbecoming of a teacher” by the Jefferson County Public School system. The firing relates to Mike’s failure to “create a proper testing environment and that he told a teacher to destroy documents.” The inappropriate activity is related to…
There was considerable media attention when residents of Louisville rallied yesterday for charter schools. Clearly, pressure is growing for better school choices in Kentucky. Here is WAVE-3’s coverage: wave3.com-Louisville News, Weather
Education Trust gets it right about achievement gaps. Their new report, “Making Sure All Children Matter: Getting School Accountability Signals Right,” says: “Even the strongest critics of No Child Left Behind will acknowledge that the law did one thing right — create an expectation that in order to be considered successful, a school had to…