The Kentucky Department of Education sent out News Release 15-051 yesterday, which contains some inaccurate information about how the state’s KPREP test compares to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). While the release claims “Kentucky Among Handful of States with Reliable Test Scores,” that might be stretching things. To begin, the term “Reliable” has…
A new report jointly released by the Alliance for Excellent Education, America’s Promise Alliance, Civic Enterprises and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University is causing a celebratory stir here in Kentucky (such as here and here). The report says that Kentucky’s public high school graduation rate in 2013 ranked as 10th best in…
We’ve heard from Frankfort (and even the Wall Street Journal) that Kentucky’s teachers are not speaking out much about the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) problems. Well, maybe we are not hearing about our teachers’ issues because someone doesn’t want us to hear what’s being said. A case in point: take a look at this…
BIPPS questions apparently caused reflection I wrote yesterday about a problematic announcement of a short-notice meeting of the Kentucky Board of Education to evaluate and select a search firm to help find the next Kentucky Commissioner of Education. I listed a number of concerns including the fact that several of the events on the agenda…
A special meeting to hire a search firm for the next Kentucky Commissioner of Education was just announced – on short notice – in Kentucky Department of Education News Advisory No. 15-046. This really catches my attention. Are we going to rush a really critical decision? First of all, some background: Kentucky’s history of hiring…
The 2015 school testing season is really just now under way in many states, but problems with Common Core and other state testing have already hit nearly a third of all the states. Here is the listing of states reporting problems, which was assembled by FairTest as of May 4, 2015. Disruptions have led to…
There’s been a lot of discussion about how the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are moving Kentucky education forward. However, while both standards seem somewhat better than the former, highly inadequate Commonwealth Accountability Testing System (CATS), I don’t think students across the Bluegrass State are getting everything lawmakers intended…
Or geography and civics, either New results from 2014 National Assessment of Educational Progress tests in eighth grade history, civics and geography are out, and Education Week reports the kids flat lined with the dismal performance from four years earlier in 2010. What kids across the country know about those subjects is apparently truly dismal.…
Hechinger isn’t exactly a conservative operation (HQ at Columbia Teachers College in New York City), but they are increasingly raising questions about the viability of the Common Core. In their latest post, “Are the Common Core tests turning out to be a big success or a resounding failure?” this education news crew says: “Last week,…
A New York Times article says it plainly. While teachers’ unions across the country are starting to align with parents and conservatives to fight what they say is excessive testing in schools, the Times writes: “In Kentucky, where the education commissioner has said parents do not have the right to opt their children out of…