I was at a conference last week where a question came up about how much each state’s public education system feeds at the federal trough. Of special interest: what percentage of each state’s total education funding comes from Washington? So, I checked what I have found to be the best available source to compare funding…
Jim Waters has boiled down the nonsense behind Kentucky’s massive awards of high school diplomas into a simple to understand discussion for his weekly column. It’s really sad that people across the country, even including Melinda Gates, are crowing about Kentucky’s claimed 88 percent high school graduation rate as though the diplomas were really meaningful.…
Diploma deception? Back on January 23, 2016, I wrote about some important problems with the credibility of high school graduation rates in Kentucky. Very simply, Kentucky’s education leaders have been pushing the states officially reported high school graduation rates as though they were really meaningful and fairly comparable to other states. But, are such comparisons…
The Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, Kentucky’s free-market think tank, joins with hundreds of groups nationwide to celebrate the fifth annual National School Choice Week (Jan. 24-30). Since its beginning more than 12 years ago, the Bluegrass Institute has been the leading voice to give Kentucky parents effective alternatives to ensure that each child…
The Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, Kentucky’s free-market think tank, joins with hundreds of groups nationwide to celebrate the fifth annual National School Choice Week (Jan. 24-30). Since its beginning more than 12 years ago, the Bluegrass Institute has been the leading voice to give Kentucky parents effective alternatives to ensure that each child…
The Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, Kentucky’s free-market think tank, joins with hundreds of groups nationwide to celebrate the fifth annual National School Choice Week (Jan. 24-30). Since its beginning more than 12 years ago, the Bluegrass Institute has been the leading voice to give Kentucky parents effective alternatives to ensure that each child…
In conjunction with his press conference on January 21, 2016, Stephen Pruitt, Kentucky’s new commissioner of education, issued a print/online report on “The State of K-12 Education in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.” Some good news is this report covers a whole lot of interesting and important territory. Over time, this format could prove very valuable.…
Kentucky’s new commissioner of education, Stephen Pruitt, held perhaps his first major event since taking office three months ago with today’s press conference on the state of education in Kentucky. Pruitt talked for an hour about a wide range of material, and it will take some time for me to cover that due to the…
Says: “Damage Will Last for Years to Come” Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, lays it on the line about what he sees as long-term problems for the nation because of the Common Core State Standards. His new article in the Heartlander cites a deterioration in the instruction of literature, a postponement…
As I wrote yesterday, we are seeing all sorts of reports computing rankings of state education systems. However, those reports are using approaches that don’t comply with recommendations found in various documents from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Yesterday’s blog discussed two of those poorly conducted reports, the Quality Counts 2016 report from…