The Courier-Journal reports the largest school district in Kentucky now joins several others in watering down its grading system so more kids will get more scholarship money from the taxpayer. Resetting the grading scale so more students will get “A’s” on their report cards does nothing to increase academic rigor in the school system. It…
Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin and Lt. Governor Jenean Hampton attended a meeting of the Kentucky Pastors in Action Coalition on December 29, 2015 to express their commitment and support for doing something better for Kentucky’s students, especially those disadvantaged kids found throughout the commonwealth. This video extract from the meeting contains comments from both Governor…
WDRB reported yesterday on bold new ideas being sought by Kentucky’s new Secretary of Education, Hal Heiner. It’s a breath of fresh air. Heiner isn’t cast from the standard education school mold, but he has been paying attention to education for a long time and knows what is going on and where many problems lie.…
It looks like the message about dumbed down high school diplomas and watered down college degrees is sinking in to an important part of our society – business and industry! The “College” web site reports that while the practice is not yet widespread, a number of major employers are now requiring SAT scores as part…
Columbia Teachers College in New York City is one of the oldest and best-known teacher preparation institutions in the country. Selection as president there requires some degree of skill and experience, to put it mildly. And, Arthur Levine is a past president at Columbia. More recently, Levine has authored a number of remarkably candid reports…
There has been a lot of confusion generated at recent Kentucky Board of Education meetings about the actual college-going rates for our students. It was first reported the rate was down. In the December meeting of the board, it was reported that the rate was actually up. So, what was really going on? I decided…
The Kentucky Board of Education (KBE) got a lot of bad news during its meeting on Wednesday, December 9, 2015. This news isn’t just bad for Kentucky. It has rather serious implications for the national Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for math and English language arts, as well. Very simply, scores are flat or in…
Kentucky has completed its fourth year of testing with the Common Core State Standards aligned Kentucky Performance Rating for Educational Progress (KPREP) tests in reading and mathematics. It is time to start asking whether or not Kentucky’s new tests are showing signs of inflation. This post closes out our examination of this important concern with…
Kentucky has completed its fourth year of testing with the Common Core State Standards aligned Kentucky Performance Rating for Educational Progress (KPREP) tests in reading and mathematics. It is time to start asking whether or not Kentucky’s new tests are showing signs of inflation. In Parts 1 and 2 of this blog series we examined…
Kentucky has completed its fourth year of testing with the Common Core State Standards aligned Kentucky Performance Rating for Educational Progress (KPREP) tests in reading and mathematics. It is time to start asking whether or not Kentucky’s new tests are showing signs of inflation. In the Part 1 blog in this series we examined the…