The Economist has published an interesting article, “Try Again,” about the generally unreliable quality of many research papers in the psychology area. The problem is that many such papers get only a “peer review.” No one actually tries to replicate the research to see if the results can be reproduced, which is the way real…
The new Profile Report about Kentucky’s 2015 high School Graduates from the ACT, Inc. along with earlier reports from 2014 and 2013 provide data to create a series of graphs that explore the achievement gaps between Kentucky’s whites and blacks. These cover a period where the results have been consistently reported as an average of…
Now that I have explained why you have to break the ACT data out by race before you start ranking against other states, let’s look at how Kentucky’s white high school graduates of 2015 (includes all school types: public, private and home school combined) stack up against whites in other states that tested all their…
But, you have to look at the data carefully to see that The new ACT scores are out, and the picture for Kentucky isn’t so great. Overall, the state’s ACT Composite Score did go up 0.1 point for all students across the state’s public, private and home school sectors, but other states are doing better.…
We’ve heard a lot of “stuff” about Kentucky’s supposedly wonderful college readiness rates over the past few years since Common Core came along. For example, last year the Kentucky statewide school report card (access from here) claimed the overall College and/or Career readiness rate was 62.5 percent, a figure Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday…
The 47 Annual Phi Delta Kappan/Gallup poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools is out, and it shows very low parent support for Common Core State Standards exists across the country. The report specifically states: “A majority of public school parents oppose having teachers in their community use the Common Core State Standards…
The liberal gang running Kentucky’s public education system in Frankfort have been in love with expensive and relatively unreliable written answer test question formats since the very earliest days of the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990. Countless times Kentuckians have been told that the only way to assess students’ higher order thinking ability is…
The Bluegrass Institute’s staff education analyst, Richard Innes, discusses Common Core State Standards on Monday, August 24, 2015 at 9 am Eastern/8 am Central Time on WBFI 91.5 FM’s Bible Breakfast Club with host Ron Miller. The program is simulcast on WBFK 91.1 FM and can be heard online here.
Attorney General: Subcommittee formed to find ed commissioner violated open-meetings law (FRANKFORT, Ky.) – Attorney General Jack Conway’s office sided with the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions in an opinion released today, agreeing that a subcommittee formed in April by the Kentucky Board of Education (KBE) to find a new education commissioner failed to comply…
Hechinger’s Reports, not exactly a conservative group, recently released “Federal report finds scant scientific evidence for effectiveness of Head Start programs” concerning the disturbing news that yet another report on the federal Head Start preschool program has been released, this one from the technically oriented What Works Clearinghouse (WWC), which analyzes reports on education for…