CNY Central.com just reported that the state of New York just announced, less than a month before it starts this year’s Common Core State Standards aligned testing, that it is making significant changes to those tests to try to encourage better participation. New York’s tests will now have fewer questions and students won’t face time…
Several days ago the Daily News in Bowling Green published an editorial praising the Kentucky Department of Education’s reported rapid rise in numerous Kentucky school districts of high school graduates considered college and/or career ready. I know there are major concerns regarding the validity of these statistics and contacted the Daily News editor to discuss…
The Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) has announced a series of “Town Hall” meetings on education that will be held around Kentucky over the next month or so. Per the KDE’s news release, the purpose of these meetings is: “…to gather feedback from Kentuckians on how they define school success.” The news release continues: “The…
The year before President Harry Truman made famous the saying: “If you can’t convince ‘em, confuse ‘em,” local Chamber of Commerce representative Richard H. Leask wrote a letter to a Bakersfield, California newspaper in which he added a perceptive twist to that maxim. “There is an old politician’s motto which goes to this effect: ‘If…
Unusual antics occurring on the campaign trail these days include a bizarre race to choose the next president of the Kentucky Education Association (KEA), the state’s teachers’ union. When’s the last time you heard a KEA candidate ask: “Why does KEA oppose transparency?” Randolph Wieck, a history teacher at Louisville’s DuPont Manual High School, did…
A new bill to bring charter schools to Kentucky, Senate Bill 253, was passed in a nine-to-two vote by the Kentucky Legislature’s Education Committee yesterday amidst expected union pushback and an amazingly frank charge from Hal Heiner, Kentucky’s Secretary of Education, that the Kentucky Education Association is standing in the way of the best policies…
We hear a lot today about how student-centered instructional approaches are get primary emphasis in our classrooms today as a result of Common Core State Standards. Things like problem solving group work and higher order thinking skills development are all the rage. But, do all those current education ideas really work well? For all kids?…
The Courier-Journal is reporting that the Jefferson County Public School District (JCPS) very seriously under-reported the number of incidents where students were restrained or secluded in its schools last year. The Courier says this data is required to be reported by state regulation. Making things more uncomfortable, the article says that the Kentucky Department of…
They need to be worried The Courier-Journal reports that the Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) board of education is conducting meetings today with a goal of doing something better for the district’s many troubled middle schools. Another article linked out of this current one reminded me that the JCPS board had voted to close the…
As I wrote yesterday, it wasn’t long after the Bluegrass Institute released our new report on “Blacks Continue Falling Through the Gaps in Louisville’s Schools, the 2016 Update” before the Jefferson County Public School District (JCPS) honored us with a response. In fact, the JCPS Response came out only a few hours after our report…