Fordham Institute says “Parental engagement: A promise, not a program” Fordham Institute’s Mike Petrilli is on to more than he knows with his latest Flypaper Blog item about “Parental engagement: A promise, not a program.” First, let’s talk about parent engagement. I learned an interesting lesson about parent engagement years ago when my older daughter…
One of the dirty secrets about some outspoken opponents of school choice is that they actually exercise choice for their own children while trying to deny it to other, less well-off, folks. Check out Kate Hardiman’s “School choice opponent sends her kids to charter school” for “the rest of the story” about a Save Our…
Reports from the ACT, Inc. and the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) give us information about how all Kentucky students averaged together and just Kentucky’s public school students alone perform on the ACT college entrance test. However, there are no agencies reporting about ACT scores for those Kentucky students who didn’t go to public schools.…
Well, not in Kentucky! In case you missed my earlier blog about high school grade point averages (GPAs) versus the ACT college entrance test as predictors of college performance, there is an effort underway across the country and in Kentucky to reduce attention to the fairly disappointing scores from the ACT college entrance test. While…
Not in Kentucky! There is an effort underway across the country and in Kentucky to reduce emphasis on and attention to the fairly disappointing scores from the ACT college entrance test. The argument being made is that high school grade point averages (GPA) are better predictors of college performance, so emphasis on the ACT is…
Education Week just released an interesting article by Stephan Sawchuk with the rather pertinent title for Kentuckians of “How history class divides us” (subscription). Kentucky is currently going through the process of revising its public school social studies standards, and these standards must contain everything about history that the Bluegrass State’s students are expected to…
Editor’s note: The Bluegrass Beacon is a weekly syndicated statewide newspaper column posted on the Bluegrass Institute’s website after being released to and published by newspapers statewide. A consistent charge leveled against reformers who want to adjust the benefit structure of the commonwealth’s Teachers’ Retirement System (TRS) is that we overstate the generosity of those…
Topic: New high school graduation requirements The Bluegrass Institute’s staff education analyst, Richard Innes, appears tonight on Kentucky Tonight to discuss the state’s new high school graduation requirements. These pending requirements will establish new quality control standards for the state’s standard high school diploma. Those requirements include new minimum competency testing in math and reading.…
I blogged several days ago about “Which Kentucky school districts grade too hard or too easy?,” discussing evidence in the 2018 High School Feedback Workbook assembled by the Kentucky Center for Statistics. The data, which is for the graduating class of 2015-16, includes ACT scores and high school Grade Point Averages (GPA) for each school…
Here is a video clip from the Kentucky Board of Education’s October 2, 2018 meeting where former Kentucky History Teacher of the Year Donnie Wilkerson briefly outlines why he opposes the current draft of the social studies standards. Donnie talks pretty quickly in this because so much is wrong and he only is being allowed…