Kentucky Voluntarily Passing on Stimulus Money?

– Having no charter school law could amount to the same thing

The US Secretary of Education is a big supporter of charter schools – public schools that operate under reduced rules – often including freedom from union restraints – because they are overseen by a chartering organization.

In fact, the Secretary is putting our money where his mouth is, saying that the amount of the second round of federal stimulus money for schools may be heavily impacted by how well each state is implementing charter school laws.

But, charter schools are not even legal in Kentucky.

So how do you think the Secretary will feel about giving any second round stimulus money to the Kentucky Department of Education?

Of course, the Bluegrass Institute isn’t hot on the idea of stimulus money in the first place, so maybe at least in one sense this isn’t so bad – provided the US Secretary of Education sticks to what he says.

Quit whining and shrink government

Wondering what's behind all the noise about the supposed $996 million budget shortfall in Kentucky?

It's really not that complicated.

The General Assembly wants to spend $9.296 billion in the year beginning July 1. Economists estimate they will only have $8.3 billion. So Gov. Beshear says there is a $996 million shortfall.

The revised budget for the current fiscal year is $8.4299 billion. Will someone please explain to me why Gov. Beshear thinks he should be able to increase state government by ten percent in one year?

Rather than whining, now would be a great time to do that promised efficiency study, repeal Davis Bacon, and get a handle on school spending.

Oregon Joining States with Honest Graduation Rate Reports

– Meanwhile, Kentucky’s reporting founders

Oregon just announced improved high school graduation rate reporting next year.

Once that starts, an Oregon Department of Education spokesperson admitted the state’s high school dropout rate will probably rise dramatically, but Oregon is clearly intent on joining other states like California that are getting honest about this important information.

Meanwhile, here in Kentucky, we are supposedly years away from a similarly accurate system. In fact, the computer program needed to generate high quality graduation rates is having all sorts of problems.

The state is even dragging its heels on adopting a better short term estimation formula for graduation rates called the Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate, not promising that for two more years although it looks like we have all the data needed to calculate it already.

Say what you will about KERA overall, when it comes to area of accurate reporting about graduations, other states are leaving us in the dust.

Disaster in the making

Gov. Steve Beshear has announced a special session of the General Assembly will convene June 15. Several Republican Senate members I spoke to this afternoon said no agreements about revenues, spending cuts, or hot-button issues like casino gambling have been reached.

Cook up some popcorn for this one. Should be quite a show.

Sticks and stones...

Susan Pace Hamill of University of Alabama School of Law put out a report on state and local public policy which lists Kentucky as one of the "Shameful Sixteen" states. She claims that our taxing and spending policies hurt poor people and "violate the moral principles of Judeo-Christian ethics."

Read the report here.

Hamill's grand solution, of course, is higher income taxes and more spending on public schools. Should be a popular read for Kentucky's big-government advocates.

Racing to conclusions

In the latest edition of liberty's lovers and losers: A national newspaper changes its mind about school choice, expanded gambling is viewed as a bailout for playing wrong cards in the past and Louisville's mayor wisely uses his veto pen. Click here to read the entire column.

Bluegrass Institute on TV's 'Kentucky Tonight'

Jim Waters, Bluegrass Institute director of policy and communications, will appear on KET's "Kentucky Tonight" on Monday at 8 p.m. (EST) to address the possibility of a special legislative session. Waters will be joined in his call for more responsible tax-and-spending policies by Andy Hightower, executive director of the Kentucky Club for Growth. Watch the program hosted by Bill Goodman live on KET1 on Monday at 8 p.m. (eastern). It will be replayed Wednesday at 2 a.m. (eastern). During the live Monday broadcast, viewers with questions and comments participate by e-mail at kytonight@ket.org. Other panelists include Dana Beasley-Brown of the Kentuckians For The Commonwealth and Mary Ann Blankenship of the Kentucky Education Association, the state teachers union.

Wanting no part of "Medicare for all"

Lexington attorney Kent Masterson Brown went to Washington D.C. last Friday for a hearing in a very important case. If he wins, Americans will be able to opt out of Medicare.

This case continues quietly as most of our elected officials on the national level are trying to force all Americans onto "free" government insurance.

Infinite Campus Heartburn Continues

– State’s student tracking software has major problem

Infinite Campus is the new student tracking software program that the Kentucky Department of Education just brought on line.

– Well, sort of.

It turns out the software is fouling up the calculation of absolutely critical average daily attendance figures for every school district in Kentucky.

Those figures are essential because a significant amount of the money that each district gets from the state is determined from them.

Henry County Schools superintendent Tim Abrams indicated to his board that they need to get this fixed by May 30th to stay on track for submitting next year’s budget.

Right now, just in Henry County they get numbers anywhere from 1920 to 2000 when they run the average daily attendance calculation. That 80 student difference might not sound like a lot until you realize this is just for one district, and with current state revenue for Henry County running $5,440 per pupil, the difference could change what this small district gets by nearly half a million dollars next year.

Chalk another one up for “Infinite Heartburn.”

More on Graduation Rates

Say what you will about it, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) definitely renewed interest in high school graduation rates. That new interest comes none too soon, because far too many kids in Kentucky and around the rest of the country are not graduating from high school. In today’s economy this spells trouble not only for the dropouts, but also for all of us who have to support their increased social needs and extraordinarily high rates of incarceration.

Recently, there has been a trend in some quarters to overstate the improvement in graduation rates in Kentucky. Some folks are coming up with all sorts of graduation rate calculations that show dramatic improvement.

Those numerical exercises have a host of problems. Some rely on US Census data, which is seriously corrupted for this use because the Census counts GED recipients as diploma holding high school graduates (something NCLB specifically does not allow with its graduation rates). Census also relies on people providing sensitive information about family education levels to a total stranger on a telephone.

Most of the other inflated presentations use numbers from the Kentucky Department of Education, but these conveniently ignore data prior to the year 2000 – perhaps unintentionally, perhaps with good reason. The graph below shows why.

A reasonable calculation of graduation rates over time that corrects for the impact of students who are held back in the ninth grade produces results shown by the blue line in the figure below.


The blue line shows that Kentucky’s public high school graduation rates are only a few points higher today than they were in the early days of KERA. About all we have accomplished at this point is to recover from a very dramatic drop in graduation rates that began as KERA’s impacts started to be felt at the classroom level.

The blue line in the graph above isn’t truly NCLB compliant, but it does use a formula fairly close to the one the Kentucky Department of Education plans to use for official NCLB reporting in the near future. The primary difference is that the calculations for the blue line include too many students as graduates under NCLB rules. Thus, the graduation rates shown by the blue line are higher than what we can expect when the new KDE formula comes into use. To make this clear, the red line in the figure shows results from exact calculations using KDE’s new formula for the years where the required data is available.

So, don’t be fooled by graduation rate presentations that conveniently ignore the full story. We are making some progress in this key area, thank goodness, but so far we really have not improved very much from where we were before KERA started to impact our schools.

For more on the derivation of the graph, see the freedomkentucky.org Wiki item on Averaged Freshman Graduation Rates, A Longer Period Calculation.

Why Kentucky needs "loser-pays"

University of Kentucky basketball rarely intersects with the public policy realm, but it did Wednesday when former coach Billy Gillispie filed a lawsuit seeking $6 million from the program.

The case should be open-and-shut. Gillispie signed a Memorandum of Understanding Offer in April of 2007 stating that if he signed a contract and was subsequently fired without cause, he would be paid $1.5 million for each remaining year of his contract.

Gillispie never signed a contract. Nevertheless, he wants a federal court to award him money as if he had. The University will wind up paying him some money just to make this case (and its inevitable legal expenses) go away.

But if the federal courts operated under a loser-pays policy, UK's lawyers could go through the legal song and dance and then show the judge where the memorandum says its provisions only become effective after an actual contract is signed. Then Gillispie would not only go home empty-handed, he would have to pay UK's legal expenses, too.

In the current political environment in both Washington D.C. and Frankfort, loser-pays isn't going to get any kind of hearing. But if Wildcats fans wonder why their money will wind up going to pay off a fired coach, they should start asking questions at least about making Kentucky a loser-pays state.

Jeb Bush on Education Part 1

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is talking about education, and the performance of Florida education under his administration certainly merits attention. A quick look at the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data for Kentucky and Florida shows some amazing progress has been made in Mr. Bush’s state.

For example, the graph below shows that Florida came from well behind Kentucky in Grade four reading in 1994 to slightly exceed our performance by 2007. That’s really remarkable.



Things get more interesting when we compare how much Florida reduced the fourth grade White to Black reading gap on the NAEP between 1994 and 2007 compared to what happened in Kentucky.



Finally, Florida really moved out beyond us on eight grade writing over the period of time the NAEP has assessed this at the state level.



So, Governor Bush is definitely worth listening to.

Check out Gov. Bush’s 7 Education Principles.

“Non-Expert” Expertise Matters

It surprised Alex Chernyakhovsky. He was looking at a way to predict how the bird flu epidemic of 2006 spread when he discovered, “The World Health Organization didn't have any predictive programs; it was all reactive," Alex says. "I couldn't figure out how they were planning on preventing something they couldn't predict."

So, Alex got involved. The result is a ground-breaking computer model that predicts the way this serious disease spreads.

But, here’s the real surprise. Alex isn’t an “insider” expert epidemiologist. He isn’t a college graduate. In fact, he isn’t even in college. He’s still in high school, a 17-year old about to enter his senior year.

But, he is a creative thinker. And, he had a new idea about a serious problem that even the World Health Organization had not previously considered.

There is a message here for some of our educators. Non-educator groups are criticized by educators who are upset that “outsiders” are making observations and doing research on education. Instead of focusing on the facts, those educators try to shoot the messenger.

But, sometimes outsiders bring unique points of view to problems that result in important new insights and better solutions. It’s just as true for education as for medical science.

For example, in the 1980s John Jacob Cannell, a medical doctor, not an educator or a testing expert, discovered that all of his young patients in West Virginia were getting above average scores in school. Cannell knew these kids and their abilities well, and he understood those test results simply could not be correct.

Cannell began a study at his own expense that led to the discovery of massive test score inflation, which is now called the “Lake Woebegon Effect.” The effect is named after radio humorist Garrison Keelor’s mythical town where all children are above average.

Cannell’s discovery shocked the professional testing community, but it did help to explain why test scores were so high in American schools even as our academic standing was slipping in relation to the rest of the world.

So, whether its medicine or education, outsiders can make important contributions to our understanding. Mankind will be much better off once educators join the medical community in appreciating that fact and in taking full advantage of all knowledge, whatever the source.

By the way, the Cincinnati Enquirer reports young Alex Chernyakhovsky is now asking questions about predicting the spread of the swine flu. Thank goodness someone is.

Can't tax our way out of this

A sobering Stateline article Tuesday about closing auto dealerships only strengthens the case for cutting the size of state government immediately:

"Consider that a fifth of California’s sales tax revenue is from new and used car sales."
"As these local dealerships close, the impact will be more profound than people realize," said Sen. Mark Norris, the Republican Senate majority leader in Tennessee. Chrysler is planning to close 14 dealerships in his state."
"To improve profits, Chrysler, which has filed for bankruptcy protection, said it will close 789 dealerships throughout the country by June 9. GM has not released the list of 1,200 dealers it plans to shutter."

Read the rest here.

Gov. Steve Beshear's common practice has been to set up blue ribbon commissions in the face of challenging problems. That is the very least he could do here.

Charter-Style Schools Catching on Across the World

Go figure!

We can’t get a charter school law in Kentucky, but the rest of the world is now following the trend in the 40 more educationally advanced states in the USA that have charter schools – and going charter too!

Check it out in Education Week (Subscription).

This sure is a funny way for Kentucky to become “world class!” First, left behind the nation -- now the world!

Where’s “Efficiency?”

My previous post about the US Secretary of Education pushing California to raise taxes gave me an idea.

When the private sector faces economically tough times, they really work on efficiency of operations. I wondered if terms like “efficiency” and “efficient” were showing up in recent news releases from Washington and Frankfort educators.

I started by looking at the “latest” US Department of Education news releases. This included releases from May 22, 2009 back to May 12, 2009. I scanned each of the 10 recent releases for the terms “efficiency” and “efficient.” Neither term is mentioned even once.

In contrast, several of the most recent “Current News Releases” from the Kentucky Department of Education discuss some efficiency issues.

News Release 09-028 discusses improving energy efficiency in our school buildings.

News Release 09-032 discusses an innovative education technology initiative in history instruction.

Could it be that thanks to local groups like the Bluegrass Institute pushing the idea of efficiency rather than more taxes, Kentucky’s educators are getting the message?

However, so far, Washington isn’t listening as well.

Washington Missing Taxpayer Message

– We can’t afford more

– But, we do deserve better facts

Several days ago, California voters rejected further hikes in school taxes. Considering the especially severe economic situation out there, with things like house values and overall personal wealth plummeting, that isn’t hard to understand – unless you are an educator – even the nation’s leading educator.

In a May 22 news release, the US Secretary of Education gets on California’s case for turning down the tax increase.

In a recent speech, the secretary told Californians, “Your state once had the best education system in the country. From cradle to career, you took care of your children.”

This is a politically appealing assertion, but I don’t think the facts support it. Since the first days of state testing from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in the early 1990s, California has never ranked at the top. In fact, California’s official NAEP scores generally rank about dead last. Even after making corrections for strong shifts in student demographics in the state (which official reports don’t do – it’s something I and a few other researchers are looking at), I don’t see how anyone can claim California’s educational system was the best, at least over the past two decades.

So, we need better, fact-based presentations instead of politically attractive assertions from Washington. That’s the way good policies will be implemented.

And, somehow, Washington needs to start listening to the fact-based signals we are sending them – the public is on its financial back, and right now a tax increase is the last thing we need.

Care and feeding of a North Carolina billionaire

Business Week magazine has an article about ten of the wealthiest people in America. On this list is a North Carolina man some in Frankfort still want to make a massive recipient of Kentucky's corporate welfare dollars.

Socialize me systematically

Betting against flip-flopping

Supporters of expanded casino gambling were for a constitutional amendment before they were against it.

Open School Checkbook Registers

– Former School Board Member Calls for Transparency

It’s an area where Kentucky has a long way to go. Do you know how much your school district spends on your own child’s bus route compared to other routes? How about the cost to heat your child’s school versus that of other schools in the district? Elsewhere in Kentucky?

These are the sorts of questions asked in “Democratize School Budget Data” (subscription may be required) in this week’s Education Week newspaper.

What makes this interesting is that Ed Week is a national newspaper. People all around the country are starting to ask the same questions that we’ve been asking at the Bluegrass Institute for some time – what is really being spent by our school systems, and why can’t the public have a better view of that information?

Graduation Rates – Who Ya Gonna Trust?

Kentuckians and their policy makers have been inundated over the past few years with all sorts of figures about how many kids actually graduate in Kentucky.

Unfortunately, because Kentucky doesn’t have high quality graduation rate data – and won’t get that until 2015 or so under current plans – a bunch of different formulas are being used here to estimate the proportion of kids who graduate within reasonable amounts of time from our high schools.

Bluntly put, those formulas don’t produce the same numbers, as this graph, which comes from a new item at the freedomkentucky.com Wiki site shows.


Sadly, the most inflated rates of all come from the formula officially being used by the Kentucky Department of Education. The department has announced changes to that formula, but I think they need to make them faster than currently programmed. With the confusion from all the rates shown above, a little more rational approach to calculating graduation rates won’t come a moment too soon.

Tastes like a game of chicken

California voters decided Wednesday to force state lawmakers to cut spending rather than vote in massive tax increases on themselves.

State officials responded by "threatening" to cut spending.



The feds are very likely to respond with a huge California bailout, which is a shame. After listening to all the big government caterwauling about inevitable disaster if spending is cut, we really need to see a state drive straight into fiscal responsibility just to prove that it can be done.

But who knows? Maybe Kentucky will do it.

Aspiring Teachers Fall Short on Math

– Almost 75 percent fail licensing test in Massachusetts

– And, Massachusetts has one of the best education programs in the country!

The Boston Globe reports that nearly three out of four aspiring elementary school teachers failed the new math section of the Massachusetts teacher licensing examination.

Says the Globe, “Education leaders said the high failure rate reflects what they feared, that too many elementary classroom and special education teachers do not have a strong background in math and are in many ways responsible for poor student achievement in the subject, even in middle and high schools.”

Well, if Massachusetts is worried, we should be petrified. Look at how our kids’ math performance stacks up to the Bay State’s kids on the latest federal math tests.



In Kentucky it is possible for elementary school teachers to be certified after taking only one college math course, something called “elementary math,” which is taught below the level of college algebra. I doubt that is adequate preparation, and the results in the graph above seem to verify that.

WHAT AMERICA’S TEACHERS SAY ABOUT TEACHING IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SCHOOLS

This new report from Greg Forster and Christian D’Andrea analyzes responses to an annual survey run by the US Department of Education. Some of the findings are remarkable.

For example:

– “Private school teachers are much more likely to say they will continue teaching as long as they are able (62 percent v. 44 percent), while public school teachers are much more likely to say they’ll leave teaching as soon as they are eligible for retirement (33 percent v. 12 percent) and that they would immediately leave teaching if a higher paying job were available (20 percent v. 12 percent).”

This seems to indicate that, despite often lower salaries and fringe benefits, that private school teacher morale is much higher than that for their public school counterparts. That is further supported by this finding.

– “Although salaries are higher in public schools, private school teachers are more likely to be satisfied with their salaries (51 percent v. 46 percent).”

Another morale-related finding says this.

– “Public school teachers are twice as likely as private school teachers to agree that the stress and disappointments they experience at their schools are so great that teaching there isn’t really worth it (13 percent v. 6 percent).”

– “Public school teachers are much more likely to report that student misbehavior (37 percent v. 21 percent) or tardiness and class cutting (33 percent v. 17 percent) disrupt their classes, and are four times more likely to say student violence is a problem on at least a monthly basis (48 percent v. 12 percent).”

These issues obviously impact the learning experience for all students.

– “Private school teachers are much more likely to strongly agree that they have all the textbooks and supplies they need (67 percent v. 41 percent).”

Given the huge amount of money we spend on public schools, this is really unacceptable.

– “Private school teachers are more likely to agree that they get all the support they need to teach special needs students (72 percent v. 64 percent).”

The Bluegrass Institute has heard for some time that the idea that private schools don’t serve kids with disabilities is wrong. This seems to support that.

– “Seven out of ten private school teachers report that student racial tension never happens at their schools, compared to fewer than half of public school teachers (72 percent v. 43 percent).”

This undermines the belief of some that snobs at private schools act out against minorities.

There are a number of other findings, but I’ll let you read the report for those. Certainly, this report provides some surprises about what does, and does not go on in private versus public schools in the eyes of the teachers. It is interesting reading.

Will Illinois import Kentucky's pension idiocy?

Kentucky has spent much of the last three decades blowing up our public employee benefits plan, creating a $30 billion-and-growing unfunded liability. Illinois's Gov. Pat Quinn wants to spend the next three decades doing the same in the name of saving money.

Quinn's move is really just a much bigger bite of the apple Kentucky has nibbled at twice in the last twelve months.

I can hear the Obama Magic Bailout Machine getting revved up for this trainwreck already.

What those new Averaged Freshman Graduation Rates Look Like

I blogged yesterday on the new formula the Kentucky Department of Education is going to use to calculate high school graduation rates. It is similar to a formula called the Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate which was developed some time ago by the US Department of Education.

There are actually data available to calculate the AFGR for Kentucky for 2008 and several previous years, and I have done that as shown in this graph.



Note that the 2008 AFGR rate is nearly six points lower than the official 2008 rate from the Kentucky Department of Education of 84.52 percent. That amounts to about 3,000 students that the department officially says graduated when they really didn’t.

The good news here is that we have made a little progress, but we still are losing too many kids each year, and we are losing a lot more of them than the department wants to officially admit.

The data to compute these more accurate graduation rates are available now, and I don’t see any reason why we cannot start to use this more accurate formula for official reporting next year.

If I am missing something, please let me know. Also, for more on the AFGR calculations, see our new Wiki item, “Averaged Freshman Graduation Rates.”

Do you know about school vouchers?

Jay P. Greene points out strong editorial support for the Washington D.C. school voucher program, which really is surprising.

The rest of his post is here.

At least until Kentucky taxpayers can get some evidence their tax dollars are being spent efficiently in schools, students and parents here would do well to learn more about school choice options. The success of the D.C. school voucher program -- and President Barack Obama's eagerness to shut it down -- should provide food for thought.

We’ve Been Heard!

– Kentucky to Get Better High School Graduation Rates

The Kentucky Department of Education just released the public school Nonacademic Report for 1993 to 2008, and there is a surprise in Appendix B where it talks about planned improvements in the way the state reports graduation rates.

At present, as discussed in Appendix B, the department uses a formula called the “NCES Leaver Graduation Rate.” This rate is regarded as notoriously inflated among researchers who have looked at the reporting of high school graduation rates. States like Kentucky that use it are considered to be publishing misleadingly high graduation rate figures.

There is a far better way to compute graduation rates, one that former Kentucky governor Fletcher actually committed us to in 2005, but this method requires a highly accurate student tracking system. Because of missteps and extensive start up delays in the Kentucky Department of Education’s student tracking system, Kentucky won’t get its first really accurate graduation rate data until the 2013-14 school year even though such systems are already up and running in other states.

There was concern that Kentucky might continue to use the inflated NCES Leaver Rate until the final, high accuracy system became fully operational. However, the new Nonacademic Data Report says the state will now transition to a more accurate estimation formula for the Class of 2009-10 and later classes pending receipt of the first high accuracy data from our student tracking system.

Improving our graduation rate reporting is something the Bluegrass Institute has been pushing for years, and while the transition to the intermediate formula could be speeded up (and even start next year), the fact that there will at least be some intervening attempt to improve data on Kentucky’s high school performance is good news.

Like we need another hole in our heads

Congressional Democrats have been talking about a federal guarantee for state and local government bonded debt for a while now.

Unfortunately for taxpayers, that plan just isn't moving along fast enough.

Given that borrowing in the municipal market is Kentucky's preferred method of overspending, our politicians will surely be on board with this fiscally irresponsible plan to federalize state and local obligations. And, of course, California's big spenders will breathe easier. But this is the worst idea -- so far -- in a growing string of bad ideas for Americans.

Governor deserves better information source

Gov. Steve Beshear is never going to get his act straight on Kentucky's Davis-Bacon requirements if he gets his news from The Louisville Courier Journal.



Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson deserves credit for his veto of an ordinance requiring union wages for certain city construction projects. A similar move on the state level would save us all hundreds of millions of dollars. There's no telling how silly the paper's upcoming editorials on this matter will be, given reporter Dan Klepal's false reference to the issue as one relating to "minimum wages."

Any union thug could tell Mr. Klepal there is a huge difference between their earnings and minimum wage. Aren't newspapers supposed to have editors and fact-checkers?

Caviar on a budget for tuna

Speaking on WHAS 840 AM in Louisville this morning, Gov. Steve Beshear dismissed a question about repealing prevailing wage requirements.

Overspending on taxpayer-paid wages based on political connections simply can't be justified in the middle of an overspending crisis.

As we await official revenue forecasts due out next week, now is exactly the right time for officials to get realistic about spending priorities.

"But we aren't as bad as Michigan!"

The Louisville Courier Journal on Monday trumpeted the arrival of two dozen auto workers from Michigan, calling them "economic refugees." Policymakers here would do well to ignore the cheerleading and, instead, focus on strategies for growth that might keep more of our own people from seeking economic refuge elsewhere.

Really, if doling out economic development deals were actually key to widespread prosperity, Kentucky would already be one of the wealthiest states in the nation. And Michigan would be wealthier still.



Getting Kentucky's political class out of the business of attempting to pick winners and losers in the marketplace with our tax dollars can't happen soon enough. The irony of allowing people who can't stop spending even when the money is gone to make actual business decisions is too expensive to keep missing.

Parents Denied School Choice in Louisville

– Even housing location doesn’t work!

In one of the most dramatic examples yet of how governmental bureaucracy can ride rough shod over parent’s school preferences, the Courier-Journal reports the new student assignment plan in Jefferson County Public Schools is generating hundreds of angry parents.

Some of the individual stories are truly shocking.

In a number of cases, kids who attended kindergarten in one school may wind up going someplace very different – and much further away – in the first grade.

One 5-year old will have to bus 25 miles each way to attend his bureaucracy-assigned school next year. His mother says she is now considering home-schooling.

Even the old rule of thumb that housing location determines school attendance has broken down. Another mom says her family specifically built their home to insure attendance at the elementary school of their choice for their son. The Jefferson County School District assured her that her son would indeed go to Stopher Elementary.

Not So!

Her 5-year old son is now directed to attend Shelby Elementary School, which is 22 miles away!

The furious mom says that had they known this could happen, they would have built in Oldham County, instead.

But, who’s to say that as the public education monolith steals more and more freedom from parents that at some time in the future cross-county busing won’t be directed to meet whatever goal government bureaucrats have set for public schools?

Without better protections for parental choice on the books, nothing is certain except that what is happening in Louisville this year could very well happen somewhere else next time.

If you know other parents in Jefferson County who have similar horror stories to tell about the trashing of parental choice, we’d love to hear from them.

Also, a tip of the hat to Toni Konz at the Courier for a good article and to Kentucky School News & Commentary for blogging this while I was on vacation.

Weekend action item

Click on this link and take a copy the Hamilton, Ohio spending transparency resolution to your local city and/or county officials.

Please report back on your efforts and your results.

And I'd love to know which elected officials oppose greater bureaucratic fiscal accountability.

What Honest Dropout and Graduation Rates Tell Us

– California knows, Why Doesn’t Kentucky?

Two years ago, California’s public education system began to get honest high school graduation and dropout data after switching to a high quality student tracking system. Two days ago, the state got its second set of trustworthy data, and it showed that only 68 percent of California’s students graduate with each class and an alarming one out of five – yes, 20 percent – drop out of high school each year.

Meanwhile, here in Kentucky, our state education establishment continues to feed us exaggerated claims about how many kids graduate from Kentucky’s public schools. Part of the problem is that while the huge state of California has managed to implement a good student tracking system, here in Kentucky our program has gone through a number of fits and starts and is still several years away from being able to provide what California started getting two years ago.

What makes this more unacceptable is that we could be getting a more accurate graduation rate figure from a decent estimation formula while we wait for our student tracking program to become fully operational. That formula was extensively researched by the US Department of Education several years ago and is called the “Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate” (AFGR).

The latest available AFGR are in Table 106 in the Digest of Education Statistics 2008 and cover the 2005-2006 school term. For California, the AFGR was 69.2, which is a point or two higher than the rate California just reported for two years later (federal research shows the AFGR tends to return a slightly high rate).

Kentucky’s 2005-06 AFGR was 77.2, and that is probably a point or two higher than the true graduation rate. However, the graduation rate Kentucky officially reported for No Child Left Behind purposes was notably higher at 83.26 percent (see Page 16 in the latest Kentucky Nonacademic Data Report).

Thus, Kentuckians are being fed a picture that is probably about 8 points better than the truth. We are talking about somewhere around 3,000 students – every year – who don’t graduate even though our educators are misleading us into thinking they do.

Anyway, we won’t know anything for sure about graduation rates in Kentucky for several more years at least.

Out in California, they know the truth now.

Louisville fries itself in Davis-Bacon grease

Louisville taxpayers will soon be overpaying for more public construction projects. Not exactly the best timing for paying off labor unions, is it?

Public Versus Private Sector Unions

– Wall Street Journal Op-Ed ‘Gets’ It

Echoing a local problem that repeats itself across the nation, a Wall Street Journal article points to a sharp difference in the actions of public sector and private sector unions in this country.

Private sector unions recognize what is going on with the economy and are taking steps along with their employers to adjust to the harsh realities of the current situation.

I know of at least one case here in Kentucky where one of the state’s major aviation employers and their union are collectively looking at all sorts of imaginative ways to preserve jobs for those who need them while doing things like setting up early retirement and other options for those who might choose to use those plans.

The Journal article points out that public sector unions are acting very differently – most don’t seem to recognize even the rudiments of the current economics. This short-sighted viewpoint has worked for public sector unions in the past – the Journal’s Op-Ed indicates that public sector workers earn an astonishing 46 percent more today in wages and benefits than private sector workers.

However, today things are different, as the recent failure of many school-related tax issues in Ohio shows. Public sector demands for more money in our faltering economy are meeting increased resistance.

The laws of economics bow to no-one. Before the public sector bankrupts the private sector, I would expect the private sector to finally wake up. In fact, the recent movement of Tea Parties and failed tax referendums show that awakening is already under way.

It’s time for public sector unions to come to grips with what is happening across the country. They need to step up to the plate and join their private sector counterparts in shouldering their share of the pain to get us through the current fiscal mess. Otherwise, as the old saying goes, what goes around, comes around, and when the rest of us grow tired of suffering alone, the backlash against public sector unions might be very sharp indeed.

Washington Post ‘Gets’ the DC Voucher Program

As the Obama administration and congress try to undo the highly popular Washington, DC school voucher program, they are getting push back from a surprising source – the liberally oriented Washington Post.

Writes the Post, “Senate hearing offers good reasons for preserving the District's education experiment.”

Check the article for comments about how the DC voucher program has produced better reading results.

Noland Named Interim Commissioner of Education

In a surprise move, the Kentucky Board of Education is bringing Mr. Kevin Noland, the former Kentucky Department of Education chief legal counsel, out of retirement to serve as Interim Commissioner Of Education.

Mr. Noland served as interim commissioner several times before and therefore won’t face much of a learning curve for many of the required duties.

However, Mr. Noland takes over, albeit for what should be a short period of time, at a critical point where modern education reform plans in the recently enacted Senate Bill 1 are in the early stages of implementation.

This could be a real challenge because Mr. Noland is part of the “old guard” at the Kentucky Department of Education. He spent much of his career staunchly defending many now discredited ideas that date from the early days of KERA. So, it will be interesting to see how well Kentucky’s new interim commissioner adjusts to the changes in Senate Bill 1 – changes that definitely move us out well beyond the decades out of touch education philosophies that Mr. Noland historically defended.

Public Schools Counting On Private Cash

– Having trouble raising taxes

A pair of May 5th articles in the Cincinnati Enquirer and its northern Kentucky edition show how public education’s seemingly insatiable desire for money is running up hard against reality.

In the first article, the Enquirer reports that school tax issues faced a tough public this month when school tax issues failed in five out of eight school districts in Southwest Ohio.

Among the three districts where tax issues won on the ballot, West Clermont homeowners will actually see a slight reduction in their annual school taxes while in the Sycamore district the current levy was simply renewed, which does not raise homeowner taxes, either. In only one of the eight districts was an actual tax increase approved.

On the other hand, a separate Enquirer article shows public school educators are putting their hands out more and more for private donations.

Such things as playgrounds, which used to be included in the tax-funded construction of new schools, now are being funded with private donations.

And, the price tags are not “bake sale” size anymore. For example, a new artificial turf athletic field and renovations to the sports stadium at Boone County, Kentucky’s Ryle High School were paid for with $900,000 in private donations.

One Ohio school actually got a whopping $12 million from its alumni foundation to fund an expansion.

Donations don’t always come as cash contributions, either. The Enquirer points out that parents are now doing volunteer service in areas ranging from photo copying to helping with reading and math to planning school events. That notably reduces the requirement for paid staff.

Still, the private cash makes up only a small amount of the overall pot of money being spent in our schools, so one way or another our school leaders are going to have to adjust to the stark fiscal realities facing more and more Americans. This is a tough time, and some hard choices to economize are required for all of us, and that includes our public school system.

Will it be North Carolina 106, Kentucky 0?

North Carolina's state House of Representatives voted Thursday by an overwhelming margin to expand the number of public charter schools in the state from 100 to 106. This expansion of educational options, sponsored by a Democrat, creates competition that helps provide opportunities for better educational outcomes at a time when we need them desperately.

Kentucky law prohibits charter schools. State education bureaucrats get pretty squirrelly when pressed about their opposition to school choice options. Of course, we wouldn't accept similar behavior from a basketball coach at any of our public universities.

A billion here, a billion there

Kentucky's Gov. Steve Beshear has said a lot about revenue shortfalls since he has been in office. Recently, he claimed overspending may amount to a billion dollars in the next fiscal year.

We are about to make it worse.

The state announced today it is ready to start accepting applications for five months in extended unemployment benefits. The press release includes this statement:

"The Extended Benefits Program is normally funded 50 percent from the state Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund and 50 percent from the federal unemployment fund. However, as a result of the Recovery Act, federal funding will cover 100 percent of the costs."

This is only true, of course, until the federal stimulus money is gone. Then we go back to spending money we don't have to pay people not to work. Brilliant.

Our 2009 High School Graduates’ Readiness for Life

As Kentucky’s public high school class of 2009 prepares to walk the graduation aisle, it is sobering to contemplate how many of these students are fully prepared for the next challenges in their young lives.

Last year, the public school Class of 2009 established a historic first when every student, regardless of postsecondary education intentions, took the ACT college entrance test. The overall average results, shown by the far right bar in the first figure below, indicate that only a small portion – just 10 percent – of the class is fully prepared for college across all four academic areas tested by the ACT.

(From: “ACT State Test Profile Report – Spring 2008 ACT-Tested Juniors – Kentucky”)
(Note: Click on Graph to Expand for Easier Viewing)

The situation looks much worse for Kentucky’s minority students, as the next graph shows. Last spring only two percent of the state’s African-American members of the Class of 2009 tested fully ready for college, and the numbers don’t look much better for most of the other minority groups, either. Even among top performing Asian American students, little more than one in five showed they were fully prepared for college by meeting ACT Benchmark Scores in all four tested subjects.

(Also from “ACT State Test Profile Report – Spring 2008 ACT-Tested Juniors – Kentucky”)
(Note: Click on Graph to Expand for Easier Viewing)

Clearly, given the increasing need for higher education for a decent standard of living and with over half of our graduates now going on to high education, we need to do far better than this.

Frankfort word games don't help much

During Gov. Ernie Fletcher's term in office, his administration justified counterproductive Certificate of Need regulations like this:

"The purpose of Kentucky's Certificate of Need process is to prevent the proliferation of health care facilities, health services and major medical equipment which increases the cost of quality health care in the commonwealth."

For quite a while, this explanation worked well enough for the Beshear administration, too. In fact, a screen shot from August 25, 2008 showed that exactly the same language was still in use.

But something changed in the eight months since then.

Just noticed Beshear has a new description up:

If you look carefully, you notice that only one word was changed. "Which" in the original was replaced with "that" in the screen shot.

This actually means something. In the original, saying "proliferation ... which increases the cost of quality health care in the commonwealth" means all expansion of health care options makes costs go up.

This was, of course, totally absurd.

The new version, in stating "proliferation that increases the cost of quality health care in the commonwealth" means only certain services make costs go up, but not all of them. It still leaves the government in charge of deciding who gets new health services and it still doesn't make any sense economically, but the grammarian and logician in me appreciate the minor shift.

What's the real reason?

Expanded gambling advocates in Frankfort and beyond have pointed to the recession and a lack of racetrack casinos as the reason for Churchill Downs cutting back from five days of racing a week to four.

But OnlineCasinoAdvisory.com tells a somewhat different story. The site suggests Churchill is devoting more of its business activity to online gambling as a substitute for live racing and quotes Churchill CEO Bob Evans talking about growth in online wagering.

The article even jokes that perhaps Gov. Steve Beshear might seize racetracks in surrounding states, given his ongoing efforts to take private web sites from outside of his jurisdiction. Bottom line is perhaps things aren't necessarily so dire at the tracks as we have been told. Could they just be cutting overhead as the online business grows?

Why Have “Highly Skilled Educators” if We Don’t Use Them?

A rare event is taking place in Kentucky. Another extraordinarily poor performing school’s Site Base Decision Making Council (SBDM) is going to lose its governing authority.

This time, it’s the Two Rivers Middle School in Covington that is finally up for some long overdue changes.

But, how effective will the changes be?

In February 2007 the Holmes Junior Senior High School, also in Covington, lost its SBDM authority. However, the Kentucky Board of Education hardly made much of a governance change, merely shifting control from the SBDM to the local school superintendent.

Now, it looks like the same approach is being recommended for Two Rivers.

Back in 2007, I asked why the job wasn’t’ given to people who are supposed to be specially trained for this – the “Highly Skilled Educators.”

I’m asking that question again.

And, this time, I’m asking another question: why doesn’t the staff note on Two Rivers Middle School even mention the fact that the superintendent route was already tried in Holmes High?

Even the most rudimentary common sense management approach would dictate that the performance of the high school under the superintendent should be examined before blindly taking the same approach for the middle school.

By the way, I took a quick look at Holmes High’s 2008 Kentucky Performance Report (KPR) to see how things went after the superintendent took over in February 2007.

Here are some tidbits from the high school data on page 3 of the KPR:

Scores for the key subjects of math, science and social studies fell from 2007 to 2008. Attendance dropped, and so did the inflated graduation rates. The only scores that rose notably were in writing, and we now know that even the legislature has questions about inflation in scores for that subject after the unanimous passage of Senate Bill 1.

In the more credible test information area, the Holmes High PLAN scores also dropped.

So, how’s that again about transferring control to the superintendent instead of someone who is supposed to be trained for this sort of situation?

State revenue drop not the end of the world

Kentucky's revenue numbers are highly volatile in April and May and were unusually high in April 2008.

But that isn't going to stop some from taking one month of statistics and extrapolating out to a justification for more tax increases.

We're down just 1.6% for the whole fiscal year, Larry Dale, and still don't have any idea how much we are wasting on education. And the $113 million "shortfall" between this year and last year could have easily been made up with repeal of Davis Bacon.

What we have is much more of a political problem than a financial problem.

Right wing wackos for school choice

If we want to use "the children" for more than cheap sloganeering and political tomfoolery only to make government bigger and more expensive, we should take a good look at how school choice forces government to serve all people better.

The word is spreading.

Frankfort "Armageddon" sounds good

We've heard tough budget talk before from Frankfort Republicans, but it's hard not to be happy seeing that Senate President David Williams appears to have gotten religion on the subject Saturday night.

Wonder what blogger he is talking about?

Bad bug already hit Kentucky

The Reason Foundation took a light-hearted shot at big-spending state governments by comparing the spread of irresponsibility through ten states -- including Kentucky -- plus another 23 "at risk" states, to people catching the flu virus.

The best part:

"Not too long ago, current Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin quipped that "[o]ne of the best ways to find funds is to look in other people's pockets." Apparently, governors and legislators in California, New York, Kentucky and a number of other states have bought into this advice and are trying to avoid at all costs (literally) the real spending reforms that desperately need to occur."

"Unfortunately, the taxpayers that get stuck with the final bill for policymakers' perpetual spending bender don't have any other pockets to pick but their own."

Click here to read the rest.

Ensure that you will have a safe, fiscally responsible weekend by washing your hands frequently and take cover quickly if you see a politician who looks like he may sneeze.

"Rock my cradle, decorate my grave"

U.S. News and World Report has the story about a recent survey suggesting the vast majority of Americans want to finance their retirement with a private annuity they own but for which someone else pays.



How long will it be until President Barack Obama is signing a 2009 Universal Guaranteed Retirement Security bill?

And why not? Promising unsustainable entitlements is all too easy. Paying for them is the dicey part, but that comes later, when the promisers are usually secure in their own little taxpayer-financed nest.

Money from Heaven, with strings

Put this one under "don't bite the hand that redistributes to you."

Shock: businesses prefer regulation to death

Faced with being driven to government-imposed extinction or government-enforced market protection, health insurers are acting rationally. And the Lexington Herald Leader is surprised.



This is really simple. "A market that offers real choices and price competition" is best for consumers and taxpayers, but not necessarily for insurers or a power-hungry government. A ban on "overcharging" higher risk classes of insureds works out for insurers, though, because they and their competitors will be mandated to spread the higher cost among their customers. Insurers aren't seeing light, they are following political winds. Can't blame them for that. They want to stay in business. Given the alternative, the market versus mandate debate isn't even interesting to them any more. They just want to survive under the new regime.

As has happened every time government expands its role into healthcare financing, (see England, Canada, China, Medicare, etc.) consumers and taxpayers take the hit. The insurance industry will only become increasingly willing to go along with ObamaCare as they continue to receive assurances that their ox won't be getting gored yet.

Taxin' and rappin'

Arizona's better health insurance idea

Gov. Steve Beshear has said a lot about his desire to expand dependency on government by signing more Kentucky children up on government-provided health insurance.

Legislators in Arizona have a better idea, which involves allowing insurance policies to be sold without unneeded state mandates, like alcohol abuse treatment.

Kentucky could also attract more insurance competition into the state by allowing insurers to exclude certain pre-existing conditions for up to twelve months, rather than the current six.

Fifth best at what?

Gov. Steve Beshear's Chief of Staff is all atwitter with the news that Site Selection Magazine has named Kentucky's corporate welfare scheming as the fifth most prolific in the nation for 2008.

"Kentucky has been very aggressive in its economic development strategy under the leadership of Gov. Beshear, and this ranking demonstrates our work is seeing results," said Chief of Staff Larry Hayes, who doubles as Kentucky's Economic Development Cabinet Interim Secretary.

The press release sent out by the Cabinet for Economic Development accurately describes the "award" in its second paragraph as a measure of "state economic development agencies' competitiveness." That's a lot different than the headline that proclaims Kentucky's "economic competitiveness" as the fifth best in the nation.

In other words, this "award" suggests Kentucky has to dole out more tax incentives to companies to get them to invest here than nearly every other state does. We had to debunk a similarly misleading ranking only two months ago.

Sure would like to think Kentucky's reporters will catch (and disseminate) the distinction. Continued cheerleading on this point would be highly inappropriate.

"Toto, we're not in Kansas, yet"

The state of Kansas has been posting public expenditures on the internet for over a year, so it seemed reasonable to expect their legislature to expand that same openness to their public schools.

No such luck.

The floor amendment that failed in the Kansas Senate consisted of the following language:

"From and after July 1, 2010, each school district shall maintain a secure internet-based check register to record the receipts and expenditures of the district. The check register shall be freely available and accessible to the general public."

The Center for Fiscal Accountability has more.

In terms of transparency, Kentucky still can't get to first base, much less peek into the vault of our secretive school bureaucracy. But it is good to see others making the effort and paving the way for the time when Frankfort allows itself to be dragged into the 21st century and out of the dark shadows of secrecy with the public's money.

Another nearby state looks at tax reform

As Kentucky draws closer to an expected legislative tax reform special session, North Carolina is considering a broad-based tax increase.

The John Locke Foundation weighs in:

"As I have previously argued, tax reform can only succeed when it is a net tax cut, not a tax increase. Lawmakers need tax relief both to mobilize the general public to favor the plan and to placate the objections of previously favored groups losing their special tax breaks. Otherwise, they’ll end up compromising in ways that make the “reforms” even less reforming than originally planned, while increasing complexity."

"Lawmakers also need to drop some of their more unrealistic goals. For example, both state and local policymakers have for decades schemed to force out-of-town business owners and tourists to pay for government services for North Carolinians. That’s silly. Few economists will tell you that it is wise to tax your exports, which is what such tax schemes consist of. Those who work, invest, and live in North Carolina should bear a tax burden roughly in proportion to the value they derive (at least in theory) from the provision of government services."

See the rest here.

As more states look at improving their tax systems, we hope Kentucky policymakers will consider wisely the various options rather than knee-jerking their way to a bigger bite of taxpayer money.

Prichard Provides Interesting Insight on Whether Kids Held Back Ever Graduate

I’m still locked out of the Prichard Committee’s Blog, so I can’t compliment Susan Weston on her interesting calculation of the percentage of students who are held back in ninth grade and then go on to finally get a regular diploma.

Susan estimates that only about 17 percent of the kids who are retained (held back) in ninth grade eventually go on to get a diploma. It’s a pretty grim statistic.

It’s also worth your time to read the comment to Susan’s blog from Cindy Baumert. Ms. Baumert interprets Susan’s statistic as indicating that those who say we shouldn’t be upset if kids take five years to graduate are wrong. Instead, it’s time to figure out what is really going on because we are not getting the job done.

To all of that, I heartily agree. We have dragged our heels far too long thanks in part to inflated graduation rates and unrealistically low dropout rates that lulled too many into a sense of complacency. Our jails are now full of the consequences of our failure to get a grip on why kids fail in school.

New Federal Study Finds Four Major Supplemental Reading Programs Don’t Work

A new federal study on four reading comprehension programs for fifth grade students came to a disturbing conclusion. Three of the programs had no effect, and the fourth actually had a negative effect.

Education Week reports (subscription), “that Project CRISS, developed by Creating Independence Through Student-Owned Strategies; Read About, produced by Scholastic Inc.; and Read for Real, created by Chapman University and Zaner-Bloser, had no effect on reading comprehension.”

The paper also summarizes the report’s findings for the fourth program, Reading for Knowledge, created by the Success for All Foundation. Per Ed Week, researchers say that program, “...had a negative impact on the composite test scores and the science-comprehension test scores for students using that curriculum.”

To be fair, this was a report on the first year of random, split sample trials. A second year of analysis is planned, and the results could look better in year two.
Still, the facts are that this study relied on scientific, random split samples, quite unlike most education reports which, as we have mentioned before, usually suffer from a lack of scientific rigor. You just cannot establish whether something works or not with such loosely conducted research.

Also, this new report looked at a lot of students and teachers. Furthermore, the research team claims no conflicts of interest (quite unlike most education reports where authors often have a vested interest in the program under study).

If you know of schools in Kentucky using these programs, we’d like to hear about that. And, if your school does use one of these supplemental reading comprehension programs, be ready for some rather unimpressive results.

Really? Is that it?

A pro-federal stimulus group in Virginia has put up at tv attack ad against a gubernatorial candidate there who opposed borrowing money to prop up the state's unemployment fund. And increase benefits. And cause taxpayers to dig deeper in their pockets to pay back those borrowed funds.

Seriously, is this all they've got?



Kentucky didn't put up much of a fight this time. But if this is the best they can do to attack people who oppose the waste, perhaps some more fiscal hawks will stand up next time.

Transparency in Education Stimulus Money

– Don’t hold your breath

The Education Week newspaper reports (subscription) that it is proving difficult to track the first round of education stimulus money now flowing out of Washington.

So far, Ed Week says most state “recovery” Web sites contain no information about actual funds that have flowed to them from the federal government.

Furthermore, the US Department of Education has decided that “not everything stimulus related must be transparent.” Ed Week says, “That decision comes despite the department’s own guidelines governing the stabilization fund, which state: ‘From the date that a state first submits its application for funding, … the department will make information publicly available regarding a state’s implementation of the program.’”

So, based on the Ed Week report, an administration’s promise of transparency has been broken.

Of course, tracking school money in Kentucky is going to be especially hard. Our chaotic MUNIS education finance system remains on the priority “back burner” for the department of education’s limited IT staff, and it is uncertain if many of the MUNIS problems have been resolved at this point.

Of course, you cannot track money without a decent accounting system. Maybe that’s why the General Accountability Office in DC is going to closely track stimulus money in 16 states as the stimulus money gets distributed, but Kentucky isn’t among them.

Too much waste even for Massachusetts

Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts has proven to be a pretty big fan of higher taxes and more spending, but he appears to be drawing the line on some legislative pensions. Kentucky would do well to pay attention.

The Massachusetts law, passed in 1950, allows legislators who lose re-election to gain access to sweetened pension benefits.

Patrick is doing all the usual saber rattling about this special benefit, which may well mean its time has come.

You can read about it here.

Meanwhile, Kentucky has a much sweeter perk for certain former legislators, which was passed into law here in 2005. Hope it doesn't take us fifty five more years to figure out what is wrong with this.

Where Did They Get That Graduation Rate?

A fairly new group has been researching the performance of public school systems in the “Urban Core” of Greater Cincinnati, which includes downtown Covington and Newport in Kentucky.

Known as “Strive Together,” or simply “Strive,” the organization has been working hard with the often weak education data available to develop a useful picture of what is going on in schools in “Cincy’s” Urban Core.

Strive pretty quickly realized that the current graduation rate reporting in both Ohio and Kentucky is a mess, and the organization put together a nice little white paper on some of the more commonly encountered formulas.

Strive points out the graduation rates that Covington and Newport claim for state purposes, including CATS and No Child Left Behind accountability, look a whole lot different from the results of another, more widely accepted formula, as this Strive table shows.


In all cases, what the schools report to the state is wildly different from what the respected Education Week researchers report.

If you would like to know more, you can find Strive’s white paper on graduation rate reporting here.

Courier’s Claims of ‘CATS’tastrophy Ring Hollow

One day after the Kentucky Derby’s big surprise, the Courier-Journal’s editors failed miserably to score their own upset. Instead, the Courier is still fenced in by the same old remarkably uninformed opinions about what’s going on with Kentucky’s education reform.

The Courier’s Sunday opinion piece runs the same old, tired and worn course. It’s loaded with whining and complaining about recent education legislation. Though the Courier is too far behind the pack to see it, that legislation finally offers us some promise of getting Kentucky’s public schools aimed in the right direction and on a path to provide kids what they’ll really need in the world of work and postsecondary education.

It’s amazing what the Courier doesn’t seem to know. For example the recent education legislation grew out of some very obvious problems such as our horrible college remediation rates, and high youth unemployment rates, which are an indication that something also is wrong in the education of kids who are not going on to college.

The Courier also is clearly ignorant of what writing portfolios were, or more accurately, were not doing in Kentucky. The portfolio’s value as a writing instructional aid was destroyed when they became an assessment and accountability item.

Even the Prichard Committee, often the darling at the Courier, admitted last Wednesday that writing in Kentucky has problems, but four days later the Courier’s Sunday opinion piece was still running well behind on the issue.

The Courier’s slam at No Child Left Behind also rings hollow. CATS was ignoring problems with achievement gaps. NCLB, despite its faults, did squarely bring this endemic problem to light in Kentucky.

Of course, it’s really no surprise that the Courier doesn’t get it. Courier first-hand coverage of important education meetings in Frankfort has largely dried up.

The Courier failed to show during all seven meetings of the Assessment and Accountability Task Force last year.

And, I can’t remember the last time I saw a Courier reporter cover a meeting of the legislature’s Education Assessment and Accountability Review Subcommittee. That committee has primary oversight of the state’s assessment. The presentations they get are important – if you really want to know about the issues. But, the Courier simply scratched.

Still, after dropping out of a lot of very interesting discussions, the Courier sounds off, again, bemoaning the demise of a failed assessment program.

Thus, in the race to do smart things for Kentucky’s education system, the Courier is just running nags – in fact, when it comes to education, that’s all the Courier’s editors seem to be, as well.

How far can we be from this?

A southeastern Chinese province has set up a smoking mandate for its public employees.



In the not-too-distant past, we would laugh something like this off without a second thought. As we earmark funds from ever-increasing sin taxes to generate an ever-increasing government doing other things unimaginable only months ago, though, we now have to wonder.

West Virginia does some benefits math

West Virginia is starting to figure out how much the practice of letting public employees trade in unused sick leave time is going to cost them.



Kentucky public workers can cash out unused sick and vacation time when they leave their jobs. Adding this to the unfunded liability we have already calculated will not bring good news. If Frankfort lawmakers think they have trouble balancing the budget now, they will really have their work cut out for them when they get serious about paying for these future benefits. Better get to it quickly. And borrowing the money isn't a sustainable strategy. Spending less on government is the only feasible approach.

Prichard Locks Us Out – Other Site Just Had Technical Glitches

On April 25th I alerted our readers that my comments were not being posted on two Kentucky education-focused Blogs. One was the Kentucky School News and Commentary Blog (KSN & C) hosted by Richard Day, and the other was the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence’s Blog.

At the time, I was not sure if this was due to technical problems or a conscious effort to censor my comments.

I now have answers.

Richard Day immediately and publicly confirmed that he indeed has some technical issues and in no way intended to block comments on the KSN & C site. We worked together to fix that issue, which now seems to be resolved.

I salute Richard for his open comment policy, which matches our policy here at the BluegrassPolicy Blog. We don’t censor posts, and we won’t remove them unless they engage in clearly objectionable things such as personal attacks or profanity. So, if your posts for some reason are not showing up here, please e-mail us at once, because the fastest way to know if something is technically wrong is if readers tell us, just as I did with the KSN & C site.

I also contacted the Prichard Blog master about the absence of my submitted comments there. I am sorry to report there was no technical issue. Prichard is intentionally not posting my comments and indicates, at this time, no intention of doing so in the future.

This means you can have no confidence in finding meaningful two-way discussions at Prichard. After all, if they censor my comments, they clearly can be doing that to others, as well.

So, here is an offer.

If Prichard writes about something but they won’t post your comment, bring it over here. If we don’t have a suitable Blog item already available where you can comment, e-mail us and we’ll create a new one so that both sides of the issue get a public airing. Keep it focused on the facts, rather than personal attacks, of course. While fact-based discussion is preferred, as mentioned above, we do include opinions of those who sharply disagree with us so long as they don’t become personal attacks or stray into profanity. After all, we think full interaction is what real blogging is all about. If it deals with Kentucky policy, and if you are blocked from discussing it elsewhere, then bring it here.

In closing, here is a tip of the hat to Richard Day. Goodness knows we don’t always agree with each other, but we both recognize the value in making full discussions available so that you, our readers, can make your own, informed decisions. That’s what real Blogging is all about.

Some real (scary) numbers from Frankfort

Kentucky Retirement Systems on Friday reported $3.7 billion in investment losses in the last six months of 2008 in the public employee benefits accounts.

It's not good news, nor is it unexpected, but with the highly questionable budget "shortfall" projections bouncing around the last couple of days, it is nice to get some government figures that have a basis in reality.

And with our reality-check, let's take the opportunity to remind everyone that continued failure to properly fund public employee benefits will bankrupt the state.

Herald-Leader Left Behind Again

If No Child Left Behind concentrated on newspapers rather than the achievement gaps in our public schools, the Lexington Herald-Leader would be the poster child for those left behind.

Not only does the paper inevitably gush about a bad plan by a few private groups to create their own, home-grown CATS scores for our now defunct public school assessment, but, buried at the end of the same news article the paper finally owns up to the writing instruction mess in our schools – only eight months after we started providing you the facts from the same federal NAEP tests that the newspaper just today has “discovered.”

Talk about redefining the meaning of the word “leader!”

Prichard Finally Admits Kentucky Assessment Grading Got Easier Over Time

The Prichard Committee’s Blog just admitted that there was a steady relaxation of grading rigor in Kentucky’s old assessment programs, bringing Prichard into agreement with a case the Bluegrass Institute has been making for many years.

Our readers know the Institute has conducted all sorts of studies of dubious scoring in the state’s public school accountability system.

For example, one of our very first fliers had a graph like this one, updated here with the latest data, which shows how the changeover from KIRIS to CATS after 1998 led to an explosion in CATS School Accountability Indexes. The CATS rescoring after 2006 added another, unwarranted jump in scores. We’ve published a similar graph in our Ten Great Reasons for School Choice flier since 2005.


We also developed other comparisons such as our “NAEP Ruler” to examine proficiency rate progress in CATS versus what the NAEP shows. And, after the legislature adopted Senate Bill 130 in 2006, we began to look at the very different messages the new EPAS tests and CATS were providing. You can find more about the Institute’s investigations of inflation in our Wiki site by clicking here.

Anyway, long before the recent legislative session began, the Bluegrass Institute had assembled impressive evidence that scores from Kentucky’s testing system had steadily inflated.

In fact, CATS score inflation was one of the reasons why the legislature unanimously voted to discard CATS – like KIRIS, it had simply worn out its own credibility by painting inflated pictures of our true performance.

Anyway, even though the dust has settled on Senate Bill 1, it’s nice that Prichard belatedly admits our past assessments were indeed becoming watered down over time.

Clearly, this problem will require better attention as we revise our testing program, and it is helpful to have Prichard on the same page regarding this problem.

Are you sure you want to do this?

The Republican Party of Fayette County will hold its monthly breakfast meeting on Saturday, May 9, at 9:00 am at the Hilton Suites. The topic will be "Lower Taxes: A Central GOP Issue" with speakers Tom Dupree and state Sen. Alice Forgy Kerr.

From Kentucky Votes:

Should be an interesting discussion...