New ACT report casts SERIOUS doubts The ACT, Inc.’s “ACT National Curriculum Survey” series just came out with a 2012 edition. The findings raise serious questions about the validity of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) that Kentucky and many other states are now using to shape school curriculum from Kindergarten through high school. Recent…
The Jefferson County Teachers’ Association (JCTA) seems to not understand who the other party is to their collective bargaining agreement. Instead, JCTA president Brent McKim keeps trying to suck Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday into dealing directly with the union, but Holliday correctly points out that the union needs to work with the Jefferson…
While state lawmakers and defenders of the status-quo pat themselves on the back for a last-minute, “successful” legislative session, the standard of living for all Kentuckians continues to be in danger. Once again, state lawmakers failed during a legislative session to enact meaningful public pension system reform. Rather than take effective action against a $34…
I was shocked to read this in the Girl Scouts own web site: The content of all Girl Scout national proficiency badges and journeys have been correlated by grade level to national Common Core Standards, 21st Century Skills standards, Financial Literacy education standards, and curriculum such as Health and PE, Language Arts, Math, Science, and…
Education Week reports that Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for Colleges and Careers, (PARCC), of which Kentucky is a partner, is running into significant controversy about how its pending nationwide Common Core State Standards assessments will deal with students who have learning disabilities. The fight has already played out on Kentucky’s own state assessments, including…
Dr. John Cannell, MD discovered school systems across the nation were cheating on tests well before KERA and No Child Left Behind came along. He says current excuses for cheating don’t make sense. Cheating incidents have been grabbing attention across the nation, with a big scandal now unfolding in Atlanta where criminal indictments were recently…
These comments from Jamie Gass are from the Anderson Tea Party’s Common Core State Standards forum, April 12, 2013.
Sandra Stotsky knows a lot about Common Core. Years ago she was the Senior Associate Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Education who headed that state’s adoption of what many consider to be the very best state education standards ever developed. More recently, Stotsky served on the Common Core Validation Committee. Simply put, Stotsky knows…
The Kentucky Enquirer launched a week long report series on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) today. And, the very first article wasted no time grabbing my attention. For starters, the article has some notable technical errors about when CCSS and the related tests started in Kentucky (More on that later). However, the really big…
The following is an op-ed I submitted for publication in the Lexington Herald-Leader. It was printed on Monday April 15, 2012. You can view the letter on the paper’s website here. If Kentucky’s public pension system was a private-sector business, it would have been forced to close its doors many years ago. Unfortunately, the pension…