The new “The Condition of Education 2015” has been released by the US Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences. Kentucky stands out in at least one figure in the publication, which shows the ratio of teachers to the total of all staff in public school systems around the nation. Very simply, the Bluegrass State’s…
Do you think building and operating a really expensive mockup of a NASA space center and mission launch control in one of our schools is a great educational idea? Well, as the Courier-Journal reports today in “Challenger Learning Center ‘on hold’ by JCPS,” the Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) did exactly that. Inevitably, this costly…
Sounds much like the Common Core controversy here in the US A scathing report from Canada’s C.D. Howe Institute calls into serious question some of the very same math instruction techniques that Common Core State Standards have brought to schools around the US, including Kentucky. Canada’s National Post reports that the new report says a…
We’ve written a ton of articles over the years about the expensive, environmentally unfriendly, and largely ineffective busing-for-integration effort that is still going on in Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) (just search our blog using “busing Jefferson County” in the search window). But, it looks like citizens of Kentucky’s biggest city just love to bang…
A lot of people understand that Kentucky’s largest city would benefit from more school options for students including charter schools operated independent of the stifling restrictions from bureaucracy and union influences in Louisville. Now, however, another hot prospect has emerged with a vengeance, and this time it is Lexington – not Louisville – that becomes…
If you currently are a 16- or 17-year old dropout in Kentucky, you are going to be forced back into school. This news comes from an interesting Herald-Leader story that ran yesterday about what is happening as Kentucky’s new mandatory minimum dropout age of 18 takes effect. Per the Herald-Leader, both the school districts and…
The Kentucky Board of Education is seeking public input on traits it should consider when selecting Kentucky’s next commissioner of education. Full details on the comment process and a working draft of the current list of desired traits are discussed in Kentucky Department of Education News Release 15-052. BIPPS readers are encouraged to take a…
The Kentucky Department of Education sent out News Release 15-051 yesterday, which contains some inaccurate information about how the state’s KPREP test compares to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). While the release claims “Kentucky Among Handful of States with Reliable Test Scores,” that might be stretching things. To begin, the term “Reliable” has…
A new report jointly released by the Alliance for Excellent Education, America’s Promise Alliance, Civic Enterprises and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University is causing a celebratory stir here in Kentucky (such as here and here). The report says that Kentucky’s public high school graduation rate in 2013 ranked as 10th best in…
We’ve heard from Frankfort (and even the Wall Street Journal) that Kentucky’s teachers are not speaking out much about the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) problems. Well, maybe we are not hearing about our teachers’ issues because someone doesn’t want us to hear what’s being said. A case in point: take a look at this…