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…
Upscale Douglas County, Colorado’s school district has a remarkably outspoken superintendent named Liz Celania-Fagen. To put it mildly, Ms. Celania-Fagen isn’t impressed with the Common Core State Standards, which she calls “Common Floor.” A recent National Review On Line article reports: “Celania-Fagen thinks the controversial Common Core standards were written ‘with good intentions to help…
The real key to the true unemployment situation in the United States is the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) “Labor Force Participation Rate” statistic. It is defined in the BLS web site as: “Labor force participation rate” The labor force as a percent of the civilian noninstitutional population. In other words, this is the…
No, I didn’t write an article with this title. The article comes from the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). Unfortunately, I am afraid the HSLDA is on target, and don’t forget, I am a data guy. If you want to get an idea of the huge amount of data that some educators want to…
Presentation on “Priority Based Budgeting, Making Government Accountable” This great video of Bob Williams’ presentation on September 12, 2013 lays it on the line about how Kentucky’s legislators need to come to grips with some economic facts of life.
Read the quotes below and see if you can guess which Common Core State Standards (CCSS) support group might have written them. Choices could include the Council of Chief State School Officers, the National Governors’ Association, the US Department of Education, the national standards creation group known as Achieve and others. “Mere memorization of facts…
Voorheesville Central School District superintendent Dr. Teresa Thayer Snyder knows test gaming well. Writing about the new Common Core State Standards aligned test results in New York, she says: “…test developers control the scaled scores—indeed they have developed a draconian statistical formula that is elaborate, if indecipherable, to determine scaled scores. I would bet my…