Is Louisville’s newspaper finally getting the message about education?

The Louisville Courier-Journal has been very slow to recognize education problems in that city. Now, however, it looks like the message is finally starting to seep through as the paper admits to the “big picture of the faltering performance of Jefferson County Public Schools in the latest round of statewide student testing.”

Maybe the folks at the paper will start to be more receptive to the idea that Louisville could use some good charter schools to help spur the regular public school system into some really effective changes for kids.

We do need to mention a testing disclaimer which so far the Courier hasn’t discussed. The 2009 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) results are in a state of limbo right now because some obviously incorrect student counts crept into the 2009 data.

No-one knows at this point if many schools NCLB scores might change as a result of the errors, and the department of education says it will take months to sort everything out. I don’t think a huge number of Louisville schools will see large enough score changes to get out of NCLB “hot water,” but we won’t know for sure for months.