One of the most frequent complaints heard from anti-charter school folks in Kentucky is that these schools of choice push out harder-to-educate students, thus inflating their performance. But a Manhattan Institute report released earlier this year challenges that. Per the study summary: “Students with disabilities and students learning English are more likely to remain in…
The Courier-Journal reports that the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office just hit the Jefferson County Public School District with an Open Records Law violation for not making public information available in accordance with the law. This adds to a growing list of violations of the state’s transparency laws by various education agencies which even includes an…
Kentucky has had its share of problems with online testing, and our state is far from alone, as past blogs here, here, here, here, and here point out. However, it looks like the massive technical hurdles presented by statewide online testing have yet to be overcome. The latest example just occurred in Tennessee, where a…
Or, is it education? Or what? At the outset I want to say that it is very hard to research the question in the title of this blog. Economists spar over this one every day, and I suspect some of the discussion is far more driven by politics than actual factual understanding of what is…
National study backs up BIPPS concerns Not long ago I did a series of blogs about apparent growing inflation in KPREP test results versus scores for the same students from the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Now, a new study from a national group with lots of involvement in the Common Core State…
Climate experts complain about research to Congress The Heartlander is reporting that 300 climate experts are protesting climate data from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that they claim inflates the amount of global warming which is actually occurring. The experts also take issue with the idea that carbon dioxide is involved with any small…
Several days ago I blogged about some education finance issues dealing with the relatively low amount of federal funding for education in each state versus the requirement to follow federal mandates to receive that money. Today I offer another financial examination, this time looking at how Kentucky’s largest school district stacks up in the latest…
Per Kentucky’s state education leaders, it was a big deal last year when the results came back from the Kentucky Core Academic Standards Challenge public comment program. Supposedly, there was overwhelming support to keep the Common Core based standards just as they are. Of course, the entire operation of the Challenge was biased. For starters,…
The Courier-Journal ran an interesting Jeanne Allen Op-Ed about how charter schools can put Kentucky into an education Super Bowl a few days ago. Says Allen: “Why has it been so hard to deliver this common-sense choice for Kentucky’s kids? Even while nearly 2.9 million children are served by more than 6,700 charter schools across…
I posted a blog yesterday that discusses how the federal government buys its way into control of state education programs with surprisingly small amounts of money compared to the total education spending from state taxpayers. Here is a bit more on this elusive subject. I was just pointed to a comment found in US Congressman…