Government transparency and public pensions are hot buttons not only in Kentucky but in most states around the nation. The Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research in Massachusetts is on a mission to prove that combining those issues and making the state’s public pension system more transparent is easier than politicians in that state would…
While enough Kentucky school districts have now approved a minimum dropout age of 18 to make this mandatory in a couple of years for all school districts, there is plenty of quiet concern that this policy change may not really work so well. Among the doubters is Jefferson County Board of Education member Linda Duncan,…
No surprise, but a new report from the Associated Press (picked up by Education Week) says: • “The United States spends more than other developed nations on its students’ education each year…” • “When researchers factored in the cost for programs after high school education such as college or vocational training, the United States spent…
A new report from Education Sector Reports, “The New State Achievement Gap: How Federal Waivers Could Make It Worse—Or Better,” makes some pretty glowing comments about Kentucky’s educational progress between 2003 and 2011 on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Naturally, without pausing for any reflection, the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) jumped all…
This letter was published in the Courier-Journal on Thursday, June 20, 2013. Have you noticed that state lawmakers find themselves in gridlock, completely incapable of swift action in every arena of policy except when it comes to spending your hard-earned money to line their own pockets? For instance, the 2011 General Assembly deliberated for months…
The title of this new editorial from the Los Angeles Times, “Was adopting Common Core a mistake,” makes it clear that things like a $1 billion additional education price tag just for California plus the uncertainty of quality in the new Common Core State Standards have even this liberal newspaper’s editors worried. Kentucky has also…
The Boston Globe just ran an interesting Op-Ed from Tom Birmingham, the former head of the Massachusetts Senate. Birmingham discusses the new Common Core State Standards, which have replaced Massachusetts’ former very excellent public school education standards: “I also fear that universal high standards and objective assessments are being jettisoned in favor of a return…
Before I discuss more specific deficiencies in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) that the Kentucky Board of Education approved for use on June 5, 2013, I want to amplify on a comments made early in the new Fordham report on the new science standards about poor performance in science today across the United States.…
The new, Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) don’t exactly shine in a new, Fordham Institute report on state science standards. Says Fordham, the NGSS are: “…clearly inferior to those of twelve states and the District of Columbia, as well as the NAEP and TIMSS frameworks.” Fordham awarded the NGSS a rather unimpressive “C,” scarcely much…
BIPPS staff education analyst Richard Innes addressed the Interim Joint Education Committee today on transparency problems with the common core state standards. The text from Innes’ presentation was posted earlier today in another blog, and you can learn still more about these issues and access the documents Innes mentions in the freedomkentucky.org wiki item on…