KERA Flunks Minorities – Again

There’s dramatic further evidence of KERA’s failure to meet the needs of the state’s African-American population. It lies hidden beneath a Herald-Leader report that some of the state’s colleges want to change the rules for how their minority enrollment percentages are calculated. These colleges want to be able to include out-of-state minority students.

Obviously, KERA isn’t producing enough qualified in-state minority students for our colleges to admit. Now, our universities want credit for tapping into the pool of students of color from other states, students who clearly get better public educations than our own kids receive.

Recently, Education Commissioner Jon Draud said he will be traveling around the state to push claims of great progress in Kentucky’s public schools. Sadly, at least for African-Americans, any real improvement is obviously very small indeed because Kentucky’s college system still can’t find enough qualified minority kids from our public schools and must search elsewhere for them.

What a sad commentary on our bloated, under-performing public school system. And, what a stake in the heart of the inflated claims of progress under KERA.