Covington, Once More

– School District is subject of major Enquirer article

Things in education sometimes seem to run in cycles. Our current interest in the Covington Independent School District is a prime example.

Within the past couple of days, we’ve discussed issues involving Covington here and here.

Now, the Cincinnati Enquirer’s Web site (which also covers articles from the Kentucky Enquirer) has released a major investigative piece on Covington.

The Enquirer does a very good job of outlining the poor performance in the district and the hopeful things that the new superintendent, Lynda Jackson, is finally bringing on line to overcome years of poor performance. After years of wishy-washy leadership that never came to grips with major issues like principals and teachers who didn’t – and wouldn’t – get the message and an apparent widespread lack of understanding of how to use data to improve performance, a new day is dawning in Covington.

Still, Kentucky’s bottom performing school district has a very long way to go.

And, those of us like the news staff at the Enquirer and the Bluegrass Institute understand that. Unlike some others, we are not fooled by nonsense from Newsweek magazine that recently ranked Covington’s lone high school among the very best in the United States.

That sort of misleading nonsense is part of the reason why it has taken so long to finally get Covington started down a better track.