Kentucky Auditor of Public Accounts Adam Edelen made an outstanding presentation to the Kentucky Legislature’s Interim Joint Committee on Education yesterday, and WYMT TV picked up on the story here. The auditor overviewed the disturbing results of 14 education-related audits that his office has recently performed in various local Kentucky school districts. One of the…
We’ve written many times in the past about deceptive reporting in Jefferson County’s “Every1Reads” program such as here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and even here, way back in 2008. The issue: the Jefferson County school system – in an attempt to grossly inflate its true performance on teaching students to read…
Education Week just posted an article titled “Common-Core Rollout Ripe for Studying, Experts Say.” This article makes it quite clear that much of the “stuff” coming with the new Common Core State Standards (and the Next Generation Science Standards) is untested, and research about what will work is badly needed. Concerning Common Core, Pascal D.…
After the Kentucky Performance Rating for Educational Progress (K-PREP) scores came out last year, I ran a comparison of the proficiency rates reported by the new testing program to other credible test results for Kentucky. I now start to update that 2012 work with the new results from K-PREP for middle school math, reading and…
Is Kentucky’s “Unbridled Learning” school accountability program hiding serious problems? I am starting to look at the new spreadsheets released last Friday from Kentucky’s second year of the Unbridled Learning public school accountability system. Already, I am disturbed by what I am finding even though I’ve only looked at the high school math performance. Very…
High school graduates won’t be prepared to pursue four-year degrees in science, technology, engineering, or math (From Pioneer’s Press Release) BOSTON – National mathematics standards adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia that supporters say are designed to make high school graduates “college- and career-ready” and improve the critical science, technology, engineering and…
Education Week picked up the story on the new results from Kentucky’s Common Core State Standards (CCSS) aligned K-PREP math and reading tests. Kentucky’s progress is being closely watched around the country because we are the first state to start testing with Common Core aligned assessments. EdWeek points out that there have been small score…
I wrote yesterday about the new results from Kentucky’s Common Core State Standards based reading assessment. Now, let’s look at similar results for mathematics. This first graph shows the percentages of white and African-American students who scored “Proficient” or more on Kentucky’s new CCSS-aligned Kentucky Performance Rating for Educational Progress (K-PREP) math tests. The data…
UPDATED FOR CHANGED DATA FROM KDE! The new test scores from Kentucky’s Common Core State Standards (CCSS) aligned tests in reading and mathematics were released on Friday, and I have started to look at the proficiency rate data for white and black students. The results are troubling. This first graph shows the percentages of white…
Here is a great presentation from the Honorable Maurice McTigue, former member of the New Zealand Parliament and economics expert at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. McTigue offers advice to Kentucky legislators and citizens on how the state can improve its lack-luster economic performance using common sense ideas that have worked in other…