Those of us at the Bluegrass Institute are still reeling from the shocking announcement yesterday that Dr. Dewey Hensley, one of the real educational stars in Kentucky, is quitting his post as the chief academic officer at the Jefferson County Public School District (JCPS). For sure, Hensley’s resignation letter makes it very clear: he isn’t…
By Richard G. Innes, staff education analyst Kentucky’s recently retired Commissioner of Education, Terry Holliday, spent his final day on the job tooting his own horn to the Kentucky School Advocate about improvements in his “college and career ready” statistics. The numbers Holliday cites certainly have risen sharply. In fact, what currently are correctly described…
Report embargoed until: Friday, Oct. 9, at 9:30 a.m. (eastern) Contact: Jim Waters 270-320-4376 Terry Holliday, Kentucky’s recently retired Commissioner of Education, spent his final day on the job crowing about improvements in his “college and career ready” statistics. The numbers Holliday cites are up sharply, and both the college and/or career ready and high…
Common Core implications? There were a lot of very interesting revelations in yesterday’s meeting of the Kentucky Board of Education. Among them was this disturbing comment from Robert King, the president of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, which oversees all the state’s public two- and four-year postsecondary institutions. There you have it – straight…
Donnie Wilkerson, Kentucky’s History Teacher of the Year in 2011, rides an automobile instead of a horse. However, in some ways his message to the Kentucky Board of Education today about the continuing effort to trash Kentucky’s social studies program with a terrible revision to the standards for that course of study does relate to…
The new Unbridled Learning release includes the Kentucky Department of Education’s new graduation and college and/or career readiness numbers. Our regular readers know we’ve been critical of those high school graduation and college and/or career readiness rates for some time. Very simply, there is compelling evidence that both rates are inflated, though in different ways.…
Common Core’s dream collapsing for minorities After an initial delay, the Kentucky Department of Education posted the latest scores for the EXPLORE and PLAN college readiness tests for Kentucky’s statewide eighth grade testing from the 2014-2015 school term this morning. Sadly, the picture for the white minus black achievement gaps is uniformly unfavorable for all…
Not good news for Common Core The new 2015 Unbridled Learning public school accountability results are now out for Kentucky, and the first thing I looked at turned out to be something of a surprise. Here is what I found when I looked at how the trends for eighth grade math and reading from Unbridled…
The Courier-Journal reports that there has been a potentially significant data breach in the North Oldham County High School that exposed thousands of present and former students to possible identity theft. A school cafeteria computer housing student names, social security numbers, addresses, telephone numbers and birth dates was hacked and this sensitive information could have…
Bluegrass Institute’s staff education analyst, Richard Innes, guest subs for Jim Waters on Bluegrass Mondays @ 7:05 p.m. on Louisville’s NewsRadio 840 WHAS-AM with popular talk-show host Mandy Connell. Open Meetings violations, scrambled statistics and scary social studies, Oh My! Mandy and Dick will talk some hot education topics you’re not hearing about anywhere else.…