Kentucky’s public education system adequately preparing only one in four

A new Bluegrass Institute analysis of data from the Kentucky Department of Education and the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education indicates that only 25 percent – just one in four – entering public high school students in Kentucky are adequately prepared for college upon high school graduation.

The public high school Class of 2006 started its secondary school days with 48,016 first time ninth grade students, but by the time the adequately prepared remnant entered the state’s postsecondary system, only 12,181 of them had received an education sufficient to avoid college remedial courses.


The statistics are particularly disturbing because in today’s economy, some level of postsecondary education is almost essential to earning a decent livelihood. Clearly, Kentucky education has a very long way to go when three fourths of the students entering the state’s public high schools are being left behind.

The full analysis behind the new finding is available now in the freedomkentucky.org Wiki site here.