The results from the 2019 administration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests in Grades 4 and 8 reading and mathematics are out, and I am just starting to dig into the voluminous data that is now posted in the online NAEP Data Explorer web tool (which is the data source for all…
The ACT, Inc. released its reports for the high school class of 2019, and the first look at Kentucky’s data is disappointing, at best. In general scores fell from last year and are sometimes the lowest they have been in the past five years. This first graph shows how Kentucky’s 2019 graduate performed against the…
Lots of folks in the K to 12 education business tell us that poverty is the biggest and most important player in education achievement gaps. Fix that, these folks say, and education gaps will go away. Some educators rely on this poverty assertion as an excuse for the rather low performance we are seeing in…
I am checking out an issue with the place I loaded my January 2018 report about School Based Decision Making Policy – A Closer Look, so I am making it available through the blog. Just click here to access.
I wrote recently about the fact that Kentucky’s recently reported high school graduation rates might be more due to social promotion than real improvement in education. That first blog in this series looked at overall statewide averages for a statistic we have developed called the Transition Ready Graduation Rate (TRGR). This shows the proportion of…
The lady in this Fox News clip will give you some ideas.
There is a discussion brewing in social media about the large number of Kentucky schools that seem to have escaped any flags for having rather large achievement gaps between some student groups. I took a look at the gaps for white minus black reading proficiency rates in all our schools and found a notable number…
For Immediate Release: Tuesday, October 8, 2019 (FRANKFORT, Ky.) – The Bluegrass Institute Pension Reform Team issued the following statement in response to the Public Pension Oversight Board’s recent discussion regarding transparency of Kentucky Retirement Systems (KRS) investment fees, which included a presentation by State Auditor Mike Harmon. The Bluegrass Institute has always been a…
If you need a 1-stop source for Kentucky’s star rating for your school or school district, the attached Excel spreadsheet Star Ratings by School and District 2019 is for you. One tab is alphabetically sorted first by school district, then by school, and the second tab is sorted first by star rating, then alphabetically by…
The Kentucky Department of Education’s Briefing Packet for the 2018-19 assessment and accountability program has some interesting tables summarizing the statewide ACT results for each year’s class of 11th grade students. Data for the past five years, including the new 2018-19 data, is presented. Let’s look at those tables. Table A shows the ACT score…