College graduation – Still more insight that it’s K to 12 that mostly counts

In what is now part one on this subject, I pointed to the strong indication in the available data that relatively low graduation rates in Kentucky’s public colleges are due to correspondingly low percentages of students who enter the system with adequate preparation.

I noticed something else in the graph in that earlier post – there are wide variations in the gaps each school has between the percentage of students entering with adequate preparation versus the percentage that eventually graduates (within six years or less of entry).

This graph shows that gap information.


The really big surprise here is Kentucky State University (KSU). KSU doesn’t graduate very many of its students, but considering the extremely poor preparation level of the college’s entering classes (about 85% are under-prepared), KSU actually does a lot better than some other state schools in getting a proportion of those kids through to a degree.

Of particular interest, the two worst performers in my adequate preparation to graduation gap analysis are Kentucky’s most competitive schools, UK and U of L. Considering the relatively high preparation rate of their entering classes, these two schools lose a lot of kids.

Particularly in the case of U of L, the losses seem excessive, especially when you consider that U of L’s graduation rate for students who entered in 2001 was only 44 percent, while UK’s grad rate was nearly 40 percent higher.

State budget woes: Time for spending reform

For most people, a ‘cut’ means you have less money to spend than you did last year. Not so in Frankfort.

Click here to read entire article.

College graduation – it depends on what happens in K to 12 schools

Over at the Prichard Committee’s blog they have been putting up all sorts of graphs with statistics on college graduation rates for Kentucky’s public universities. While the Prichard folks haven’t come right out and said it, the strong hint they seem to be dropping is that Kentucky’s colleges are not doing a very good job and the problem rests with the colleges.

While I certainly agree that our colleges graduate far too few, I don’t think (with the exception of the operation of teacher training programs) that the major blame rests at the college level.

Very simply, it isn’t reasonable to expect our universities to create silk purses out of the sow’s ears they are getting from the K to 12 public school system.

Anyway, I decided to take a different look at the graduation rate information Prichard was using to see if the problems of inadequate high school preparation showed in the data. To do that, I compared the preparation level of entering college freshmen to the percentage that eventually graduate.

The graph shows what I found.


In a nutshell, the success of first-time entrants into Kentucky’s colleges in 2001 relates extremely well to the best available data on college preparation of incoming freshman the next year in 2002.

The finding, which isn’t surprising, is that when colleges can accept a higher percentage of prepared students, they generally graduate more of those students (For the statistical types, the correlation between preparation rates and graduation rates is very high, at 0.86. A perfect correlation would be 1.0. In social statistics correlations over 0.8 are very significant).

The graph tells us more. Very simply, our four-year colleges cannot find enough fully qualified applicants. Most accept an alarmingly high proportion of under-prepared students. In five out of eight of our public universities, the proportion of students entering with adequate preparation is only on the order of one out of two, or even less.

So, don’t put too much blame on the colleges for our poor postsecondary graduation rates. The data indicates the problem rests with the K to 12 public schools in this state.

Data Sources:

The college graduation rates for the entering class of 2001 in the graph come from a federal Web tool called the “College Navigator.”

Unfortunately, the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education didn’t start to report percentages of students prepared for college until the entering class of 2002, but it isn’t likely that there was much of a change from the actual data for the entering college freshmen of 2001.

That preparation rate data for the entering class of 2002 is found in Table 1 in the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education’s (CPE) “Underprepared Students in Kentucky: A First Look at the 2001 Mandatory Placement Policy.”

Talking up charter schools for Kentucky

Over at the Kentucky School News and Commentary Blog (KSN&C), they are really starting to talk up charters. Within the last couple of days, the site has posted an interesting list of considerations if Kentucky sets up charter legislation and made comments that Kentucky could be at a strong competitive disadvantage for second-tier education stimulus money if we don’t enact charter legislation.

KSN&C also doesn’t buy the word put out by Kentucky Governor Beshear and Kentucky Education Secretary Helen Mountjoy that our School Based Decision Making Councils are a suitable substitute for charter schools. Like us, KSN&C sees right through that terribly misguided comparison.

Feds should hold out for charter schools in Kentucky

Site-based councils are no substitute for charter schools.

Click here to read entire news release.

Good news buried in recent charter school report

There actually is some very good news buried in “Multiple Choice: Charter School Performance in 16 States.” However, there also is more evidence that effective analysis of charter schools is very difficult, and even analysts sometimes don’t fully understand the most important messages in the data.

For example, even the Multiple Choice report’s lead author tends to overlook some important messages in the data. As quoted in Education Week, the report’s lead author, Margaret E. Raymond, says, “If this study shows anything, it shows that we’ve got a two-to-one margin of bad charters to good charters. That’s a red flag.”

I think that summary misses some important information.

Perhaps the most important finding in the report is that not all state charter programs are the same. In some states, charters on average do more poorly than what the reporters said were comparable public school results, but in other states charters had a clear advantage.

The report says, “Relative to their TPS (typical public school) peers, the average performance of charter students in reading was significantly positive in Arkansas, California, Colorado (Denver), Louisiana, Missouri, and North Carolina.”

That’s news we can use. If Kentucky establishes charter schools, these are some “go-to” states to look at for model legislation.

Another point, and an area where the report scarcely scratches the surface, is the finding that it takes time for charter schools to overcome the poor educations that new arrivals usually bring with them.

This graph from the report shows that in their first year in charters, students perform notably more poorly than what the report considered to be counterpart performance in public schools. That’s likely due to adjusting to a new, and more demanding, school. In the second year, there isn’t much difference in performance between charter and public school students. However, by the third year of charter experience, the trend notably reverses in favor of students in charters.


What is particularly interesting is the numbers in the graph are averaged across all 16 states in the study, including those with weaker charter school programs. I’d love to see how the graph looks for only those states with strong charter laws. The report in question does not perform that very obviously needed examination, unfortunately.

Still, the data in this new report says:

• Charters in states with good laws do outperform regular schools.

• Students who stay in charters long enough (at least three years) do start to outperform their public school counterparts, even in states with weaker charter school laws.

• Even education researchers at places like Stanford don’t always “get” all the messages in their own data.

WFPL not sure US Ed Secretary will buy Kentucky Site Base School Council nonsense

Kentucky’s governor and its Secretary Of Education Helen Mountjoy are trying to convince the US Secretary of Education that Kentucky’s School Based Decision Making Councils are a suitable alternative to the charter schools the federal official favors.

But, WFPL radio knows that is anything but a done deal.

Governor rode a dead horse

Gambling is not the best way to solve state budget, horse-racing woes.

Click here to read entire column.

Leftover Stumbo gumbo: Recipe missing plan to eliminate artifically high wages

House Speaker Greg Stumbo, who tried to "persuade" legislators to vote for expanded gambling at Kentucky's horse tracks by promising that some of the revenue would go to repair crumbling schools, is now saying that those who voted against gambling might be in trouble. Check out this warmed-over political gumbo from Stumbo:

"I wouldn't want to go home and defend a vote of non-action on behalf of my leadership, that when people expect you to act and also wonder why for example you wouldn't vote for schools in your own district," Stumbo said.

Uh...I don't think that's the right recipe for success with savvy Kentucky taxpayers. Proof? "Candidates who opposed an expansion of gambling won in each of the three recent special elections in the Senate."

Gambling is a secondary issue here. This is about the political double-dealing involved in tying a vote for VLTs at horse tracks to repairing crumbling schools. All the while Stumbo refuses to throw the dice on behalf of taxpayers by standing up to the labor unions and against the state's current policy of paying artificially high wages on public projects.

Kentucky’s official dropout rates considered “generous”

– Many experts not fooled

It looks like high school dropouts are on a lot of peoples’ minds right now. The Cincinnati Enquirer reports that many experts looking at dropout rates for Kentucky and Ohio consider the official rates to be “generous.”

In other words, experts consider the real situation to be definitely worse than the Kentucky Department of Education wants to admit.

The Enquirer quotes Cincinnati State spokesman Bob White as saying, "Everybody involved in this knows that the problem is worse than many of the published numbers. It really has to do with the way Ohio collects its data. Kentucky has a different system. You can tweak it any way you want."

Well, Kentucky has been tweaking, but that isn’t going to pass muster much longer. The Enquirer also reports, “At the urging of the nation's governors, the U.S. Education Department has ordered all states to use the same graduation rate methodology by 2012.” Why we have to delay to learn the truth isn’t mentioned, but we have talked about this extensively in this blog.

Why not ask your state school board member why they are delaying going to a better formula for two more years. We have the data to calculate better graduation rates with that formula now. Why are we delaying until the feds make us do it?

Honest high school graduation rates

– All we’ve gotten so far is broken promises

Back in 2006, the Kentucky Auditor of Public Accounts did an official audit of the dropout and graduation rate reporting from the Kentucky Department of Education.

The auditors found the department was seriously under-reporting dropout rates and over-reporting graduation rates.

In their response to that audit, the Kentucky Department of Education claimed it would start to compute high quality graduation rates starting with the Class of 2009 (Page 44 in the audit).

In the same audit, the software vendor who was creating the program to generate that high quality data took issue with some of the audit findings, pointing out that the software was quite capable, but it was KDE policies that were getting in the way of good student tracking (Pages 45 to 46).

Also in 2006, the Kentucky Department of Education reported to the National Governors Association (NGA) that it would start high accuracy graduation rate reporting using the “NGA Compact Rate” in 2009 (Page 14).

Well, it’s 2009. Anyone seen any high accuracy graduation rate data for Kentucky?

What’s more, Appendix B in the latest Nonacademic Report from the Kentucky Department of Education now says that we won’t see high quality rates until 2014.

In the mean time, we will get two more years of the same inflated “stuff” that the auditor found. Then, only because the federal government is going to make us do it, we will get two years of somewhat more accurate estimates.

But, we could get those somewhat more accurate estimates now. Why all the foot-dragging?

And, why is the department now going to be five years late on its promise to give us accurate information?

Was it software screw-ups, or bad department of education policy decisions? Inquiring minds want to know.

Nothing special about this 'special' session

Kentuckians should be scratching their heads, and wondering: Why is it, again, that the politicians went to Frankfort and spent more than a week, with each day costing the equivalent of one of Kentucky's many well-paid teacher's salaries?

None of the tough issues -- the ones that could arguably require a special legislative session -- were addressed: implementing a defined contribution program for state workers, enacting charter-school legislation that would allow Kentucky to take advantage of the second round of stimulus funding and addressing harmful labor policies that harm our chances for real economic development, including eliminating the practice of paying artificially high wages on public projects and allowing workers to choose whether they join unions.

Not a single issue was dealt with, including the budget matters passed during this $60,000-a-day special session, that could not have been done during the regular session.

Big Elephant in the Education Room

Kentucky educators and legislators like to debate in the 'safe' zone when it comes to public education performance. More money for education, testing standards, and graduation rate statistics are safe debates. The power structure of education is not threatened. No one falls out of their comfort zone. The following video prepared by Reason TV on Education Revolt in Watts describes challenges to education reform that education power brokers in Kentucky don't want to address:

School performance and challenges like what were described in Watts exist in Kentucky. The Jefferson County Southern Leadership School Audit Report 10/15/2006 - 10/20/2006 is extremely concerning. Pages 5 and 6 of the audit give a brief summary overview of the findings. These two pages clearly bring into question the seriousness of Kentucky's oversight approach, support approach, and accountability approach.

The audit was for one school. Yet, Jefferson County has many failing schools. These schools are failing to provide students the education fundaments to compete in life.

Like the school board member in the Education Revolt in Watts said, "I'm not sure what tomorrow looks like but I've had enough of yesterday".

It is long past time for Kentucky's leadership to put student learning as the top priority and hold educators and oversight boards accountable to get the barriers to real improvement out of the way.

It is long past time draw the line in the sand and make sure taxpayers are getting the maximum learning impact from each dollar spent in the education budget.

Invasion of the enviro-lites

NASA scientist James Hansen wants the attention that a protest (along with actress Daryl Hannah and 28 others) in front of Massey Energy in Charleston W. Va. brings, but he doesn’t want a real debate.

Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship offered to debate Hansen about the environmental impacts of coal mining on mountaintops. But noooooooo, Hansen wouldn’t do that. He would agree only to participate in a public discussion, “but not an adversarial debate.”

Hansen apparently doesn’t want the rigors required by a real debate. That would require preparation, knowledge, supporting facts, well-established and articulated positions. Instead, he apparently wants a syrupy, enviro-lite discussion void of requirements that tough questions be answered and extremist environmental positions be supported -- an event where he can get the crowd on his side even if the truth is not.

School districts have to pay

– Parents who put learning disabled child in private school win Supreme Court case

– NEA caught in the tar baby of not caring about special kids

Education Week reports that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled, “Federal law authorizes reimbursements for private school tuition, even when a child has never received special education services from a public school.”

Apparently, the school district involved had, “Unreasonably failed to identify a child with disabilities.” Reports EdWeek, “The case raised the question of whether parents in a special education dispute with a school district may be reimbursed for ‘unilaterally’ placing their child in a private school when that child has never received special education services from the district.”

Had the court not intervened, local schools would have maintained the ability to unfairly deny services just to save money. But now, the local district will have to pay the costs for the special private school the student in question wound up attending.

As a consequence of the ruling, schools around the country will have to be more careful about denying special education services to students who really need them.

Naturally, the National Education Association, which fought against the court’s final position, is upset. The union thinks this will siphon money away from public schools. Maybe so, but if the union really cared about kids, they would realize that if proper services hadn’t been denied by public schools in the first place, this court case never would have happened.

As it is, this issue looks like a tar baby for the union, and the union and its members are “stuck” with the onus of looking like they actually condone failure by public schools to meet the needs of learning disabled students.

'Racinos' not the answer to economic woes

The state Senate Budget Committee voted this week to kill a bill that would have expanded gambling at Kentucky horse tracks. However, we're under no illusion that this will be the last we hear on the issue. Commentator Jim Waters explains why 'racinos' are a bailout the commonwealth could do without.

Click here to listen to this commentary.

Kentucky’s site base councils instead of charter schools?

– Surely someone is joking!

US Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, has repeatedly stated in recent weeks that states which want to compete for second round stimulus money for education must not have laws which inhibit charter school operations.

It looked like a real threat for Kentucky because we don’t even have charter schools here (except for special cases of Gatton School of Math and Science at Western Kentucky University and the Model Lab Schools at Eastern, both of which somehow just happen to be located in districts of powerful house leaders).

Now, the Kentucky School Boards Association reports that Governor Beshear and Kentucky education secretary Helen Mountjoy are trying to sell the US Secretary of Education a bill of goods that Kentucky’s site based decision making councils (SBDM) are somehow equivalent to charter schools. Therefore, Kentucky should be able to compete for second tier stimulus money even though charters are illegal here.

That’s just not right.

Just to get the conversation started, charters, as their name indicates, are run by a local chartering agency (perhaps a college or university, or a mayor’s office). That chartering agency generally isn’t part of the established school bureaucracy. The charter grantor has the ability to hold the schools accountable. The chartering group is also located close to the school where it can provide extra assistance as well as helpful oversight.

Charters also create school choice for parents.

SBDM schools don’t function in any way like this.

Now, how about your inputs? Do you think SBDM are a suitable substitute for real school choice charter schools?

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.

Senate didn't buy Stumbo's gumbo

The state Senate Budget Committee has voted 10-5 to kill the bill that would have expanded gambling by legalizing Video Lottery Terminals at Kentucky horse tracks. This came following all manner of arm-twisting and other "persuasive" techniques employed by House Speaker Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg.

After the vote, Ron Geary, the owner of Ellis Park in Henderson, Ky., said that he would close the track following its 2009 meet.

Our system is flawed, but occasionally it works.

Stumbo shows he understands the effect of raising taxes

For the record, we now know that House Speaker Greg Stumbo understands the basic economics of taxation.

Today's Herald-Leader reveals this telling quote:"...Stumbo released a letter from Kentucky Lottery officials who said Williams' proposed 10-percent tax on lottery tickets would hurt sales and put the state's lottery at a disadvantage compared to other states with no tax."

There you have it sports fans. Speaker Stumbo understands that if the House of Representatives proposes to raise the tax on something - by definition - less of it will be produced or sold. So when he proposes to raise personal income taxes, taxpayers will work less; if he raises sales taxes, people will buy less; if he raises real estate taxes or impact fees on developers, fewer projects will be built.

Let's hold him accountable for this revelation.

Do you know where your teacher is?

If you ever doubted the harmful effects of teachers unions on America's public education system and the children who sit in its classrooms, doubt no more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090622/ap_on_re_us/us_rubber_rooms

Teachers and principals on the dropout problem

– New survey exposes school staff members’ lack of knowledge

A remarkable report of a recent survey of teachers and principals, “ON THE FRONT LINES OF SCHOOLS, Perspectives of Teachers and Principals on the High School Dropout Problem,” has just been released by Civic Enterprises. It shows that our school staffers have some very disturbing holes in their appreciation of the high school dropout situation.

For example, while it is a solid faith-belief among teachers that parents are a major part of the dropout problem, another Civic Enterprises report based on parent surveys, “One Dream, Two Realities: Perspectives of Parents on America’s High Schools,” shows, “Parents with less education, lower incomes and children in low-performing schools were the most likely to see a rigorous education, and their own involvement, as critical to their child’s success.” That parent survey report also says that lower income parents feel far less welcome in their child’s school. That unwelcoming attitude certainly would interfere with the ability of school staff to really understand what parents think and are trying to do.

Other comments in the new teacher and principal survey further support concerns about school staffer attitudes. The report found, “Less than one-third of teachers believe that schools should expect all students to meet high academic standards, graduate with the skills to do college-level work, and provide extra support to struggling students to help them meet those standards.” If you don’t expect kids to do well, they generally won’t.

The new survey also shows, “Significant majorities of both teachers and principals do not believe that students at risk for dropping out would respond to these high expectations and work harder.” I know some charter schools that would vehemently protest that incorrect belief. I just wrote about one earlier today.

More importantly, when Civic Enterprises discussed this issue with dropouts themselves, “Two-thirds of dropouts said they would have worked harder if more were demanded of them.” You have to wonder if the teachers ever effectively communicated with these kids.

There seems to be a lot of denial in the school community. Teachers and principals refuse to come to grips with the dimensions of the dropout crisis. Civic Enterprises reports, “Nearly half of teachers (48 percent) and more than half of principals (55 percent) reported their school’s graduation rates were 90 percent or higher. Only 23 percent of teachers and 20 percent of principals reported their school graduated less than 80 percent of their incoming freshman class.”

While there is plenty of controversy about what the real graduation rate is in the United States (largely thanks to educators doing a lousy and so far ineffective job of figuring out what the numbers actually are), the vast majority of researchers in this area point at US average rates no higher than 80 percent. If so, a very large proportion of our school staffers are either romantically in denial, or they purposely are hiding the sad facts from the rest of the country to cover their poor performance. Neither possibility is acceptable.

There is a lot more in the Civic Enterprises report, and anyone who really would like to see our dropout situation fixed, teachers included, needs to put their nose into these pages.

Teachers’ union fibbing?

– Caught by Wall Street Journal

The National Education Association was caught fibbing about the performance of the Washington, DC, school voucher program.

Per the Wall Street Journal, the union seriously misrepresented performance of students in the voucher program, which gives students a publicly financed money voucher that they can use to attend any school, either public or private.

The Journal quotes the union saying, "Over its five year span, the pilot program has yielded no evidence of positive impact on student achievement."

The paper then points out that a recent study from the US Department of Education found, “Voucher students…are reading almost a half-grade level ahead of their peers,” and that the voucher program’s, “Earliest participants, … are 19 months ahead after three years.”

There seems to be a failure here, but it isn’t with vouchers, but rather with character and honesty. Either the Wall Street Journal is way out of line, or the largest teacher organization in the country is.

Editorial: End 'state enforced price fixing'

Sunday's editorial in the Bowling Green Daily News didn't pull any punches in describing the harmful effects of Kentucky's prevailing-wage policy. It called the policy "a government enforced price fixing conspiracy" on public projects.

The editorial did a good job of addressing how Kentucky's prevailing-wage policy is harmful to the commonwealth's economy: "Rather than allowing the free market to deliver the best value, these laws require labor prices established at the prevailing (which is to say union) rate."

Is anyone in Frankfort listening?

California charter schools raise eyebrows

– but get results

The American Indian Public Charter Schools in Oakland are “Spitting in the eye of mainstream education” according to the Los Angeles Times.

The American Indian schools waste no time making the point that they are different, saying they, "…are looking for hard working people who believe in free market capitalism. . . . Multicultural specialists, ultra liberal zealots and college-tainted oppression liberators need not apply."

That’s a slap in the face of most of the education philosophies we hear in Kentucky.

The only problem for Kentucky-style education philosophy is that the inner-city Indian Public Charter Schools (97 percent of students are disadvantaged) outscore almost all the rest of the schools in California on state tests. The middle school ranks fifth in the entire state of California on that state’s public school assessments.


That includes some of the nation’s most upscale residential areas.

There is a lot more, as well. According to American Indian’s School Accountability Report Card, Reported for School Year 2007-08 the school is doing an outstanding job academically on the California Standards Tests (CST). The school’s trend over the past three years is strongly positive, showing students perform far above California and Oakland District averages.


The school is also covering education gaps very well.


Except for African-Americans in History-Social Science and Latinos in English-Language Arts there are no significant gaps. And, even for those two groups and subjects, test scores are remarkably high.

Note that some groups of students are so small in number that their scores are not reported. The biggest standout is that this is strongly a school of color. About half the students are Asian, and the rest divide pretty evenly among Hispanics and African-Americans. Whites are virtually nonexistent here. However, because the Asians are high poverty, and they are balanced by the combined numbers of normally low-scoring Hispanics and African-Americans, the test results are most unexpected.

One last point: the school has no problem with discipline.


Thus, this charter school really does look like a school to watch, by any measure.

To learn more, and to see some of the remarkable, in-your-face philosophies in this school, check out its Web site here.

Oldham County School District trims fat

The Bluegrass Institute has been concerned for years about the fact that Kentucky’s public schools have consistently had among the nation’s most top heavy staff to teacher ratios of any state in the nation. We’ve pointed this out since our first publication of our “Ten Great Reasons for School Choice” flier.

Averaged across the United States and Washington DC, the ratio of teachers to total staff is 51.5 percent, meaning there are slightly more teachers than all staff combined. Here in Kentucky, however, the latest available data shows our teacher to total staff ratio is only 43.9 percent, way below the US average. That means staff significantly outnumber teachers in the Kentucky public school system.


Simply put, we have a lousy “tooth to tail” ratio. And, its teachers, not staff that research shows to be the most important factor in education. We even agree with the Prichard Committee on that one.

Now, thanks to tight funding, some of Kentucky’s excess fat is getting cut, at least in one school district. Oldham County Schools are doing a smart thing and evaluating low productivity staff positions and eliminating them.

Other school districts would do well to follow the Oldham County example. In these lean times when thousands of Kentuckians simply cannot afford the burden of more taxes, it behooves our schools to join the private sector to aggressively seek out and eliminate inefficiencies. And, as the graph above shows, a great place to start is to examine the top-heavy staffing found across all our school districts.

No charters, no stimulus money

The Associated Press is emphasizing recent comments from the US Secretary of Education that $5 billion in second round stimulus incentive funding will mostly flow only to states that don’t impede charter schools.

Without even a charter school law on the books, it looks like Kentucky could be left out in the cold.

The news agency also says that this federal money will be withheld from states that attempt to creatively reallocate it to other than federally intended uses. That could also hurt Kentucky if it tries to grab second round stimulus money with a “quickie” charter law that just sets this type of school up to fail or attempts to siphon much of the incentive cash away for any other uses.

What Indians find when they move back to India

"The education system here is excellent. The kids have learned so much more here, I think, than in the U.S.”

Deepa Venkatesh on what she and her husband found when they moved to India from San Diego, quoted by National Public Radio here.

A superior education system is one reason why you get to talk to someone in India when you have problems with your computer. It’s also a reason why India’s economy has not been hit nearly as hard as ours by recent economic events.

This is why we cannot continue to accept low performing schools in the United States. We mortgage our kids’ futures otherwise. Right now, Indians have choices, and they clearly are exercising them, leaving upscale places like San Diego to find even better educational systems overseas.

Great Thoughts from Penny Sanders on Charter Schools

Read them at the KSN & C Blog here.

Penny Sanders is a former head of the Kentucky Office of Education Accountability and has done consulting work in states with good charter systems. Her comments are always informed and very thoughtful.

Bunning should ‘balk’ at earmarks, along with others

The only one of the four U.S. senators representing Indiana and Kentucky not to request earmark spending in this year's budget was a Democrat. This offers a glaring clue about why the Grand Old Party is in trouble.

Click here to read entire column.

NCLB fear not realized

– Top and bottom students have not been shortchanged

– Teachers do the right thing regardless of testing credit

Education Week also has an article (listed as free access) concerning the new report from the Center on Education Policy I mentioned in another post today.

After looking at testing results from across the nation, EdWeek says the new report concludes, “that test scores for both "advanced" and "basic" students rose in nearly three-quarters of assessments studied across states and grade levels, a level of progress only slightly lower than that of students reaching proficiency.”

The “advanced” and “basic” categories are generally equivalent to the “novice” and “distinguished” scores from CATS and indicate levels of performance notably below and above the “proficient” level.

The message I get from this, and it is a really good one, is that teachers will try to do the right thing for their students even when they might not get credit for it on a specific assessment.

This is an important lesson. It shows that our “testing drives everything” fanatics in Kentucky are wrong. Just because something doesn’t get credit in an assessment program doesn’t automatically mean that good teachers will deemphasize or totally ignore it.

It’s a lesson we should keep in mind as Kentucky rebuilds its school assessment program.

National study on NCLB won’t draw conclusions from CATS scores

According to WFPL public radio in Louisville, a new study from the Center on Education Policy shows that reading and math test scores in most states have risen since No Child Left Behind was enacted.

Most states, that is.

The study group wouldn’t draw conclusions from Kentucky’s CATS scores, however, because changes in our testing program in 2007, made CATS, “insufficient to determine any trends,” according to Jack Jennings, the head of the Center on Education Policy. Basically, Jennings’ team recognized that the CATS trend lines had been destroyed in 2007.

It’s important to note that the destruction of the CATS trend lines wasn’t caused by Senate Bill 1, which ended CATS. It was a result of inflationary scoring changes made by Kentucky’s education leadership themselves several years earlier.

In fact, if Kentucky’s educators had not made such obviously inflated, trend busting changes after 2006, Senate Bill 1 might not have passed. One of the best arguments to preserve CATS was its trend line. When that trend line was cut, those who wanted to keep CATS lost their most compelling argument.

So, Kentucky’s educators largely brought the demise of CATS on themselves, and even research teams in Washington recognize what happened to the validity of the CATS trend lines.

Charter Schools

– The Mayor of Indianapolis gets it!

The mayor of Indianapolis gets the value of charter schools and wants to add more in his city. Check out the parent interest in getting their children into these schools.



Meanwhile, Kentucky remains behind the eight ball, without a charter school law. What does Indianapolis know that we don’t?

Be a bulldog for freedom at Bulldog's

Dr. Rand Paul will help COAST launch a new chapter in Independence this Sunday, June 21, at Bulldog's Roadhouse, 2015 Declaration Drive.

Paul is the son of presidential candidate, Dr. Ron Paul, and is exploring a run for the United States Senate.

We welcome the arrival of COAST in Kentucky. The group describes its goal: "to bring the message of truly limited government to the Commonwealth."

Of course, the Bluegrass Institute has been doing that for six years. But we won't quibble. We welcome any and all help in this effort!

ABC's Stossel enters blogosphere

ABC's John Stossel of "20/20" fame is now blogging.

Few are as effective at addressing unintended consequences of unsound public policy.

Prevailing avoidance

Kentucky's legislative leaders are finally addressing the need to repair crumbling schools -- but only as it benefits their call for more gambling. They remain resolute in their refusal to consider addressing antiquated and wasteful prevailing-wage policies, which drive up the cost of repairing schools by a whopping 20 percent. Apparently, satisfying labor constituencies is more important than educating kids.

A most effective way

USA Today said it, and we believe it: 'Low-income kids need a chance to succeed. School choice is the most effective way to give it to them.'

Click here to listen to the entire commentary.

National standards secrecy generating push back

– Ruffled feathers could impact Kentucky’s attempt to revamp CATS

Kentucky has signed on to an effort from the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) to create a set of common education standards for all the states.

To date, 46 states are involved.

The current plan is for these new national standards to become the major “spine” of Kentucky’s education standards for the new test that will replace the now defunct CATS school assessments. Thus, issues about the national standards are of major importance to Kentucky’s education system. And, an issue is emerging.

The process of creating the new national standards has so far been conducted in secrecy. Aside from keeping the public in the dark, the process has excluded a number of national organizations with backgrounds in standards efforts and considerable influence with teachers. Some excluded groups include the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English.

Education Week now reports (subscription) that these groups are starting to push back about being excluded.

So far, the major participants in the NGA/CCSSO effort include the ACT, Incorporated (creator of the ACT college entrance test and other assessments), the College Board (creator of the SAT), and a group named “Achieve” that was formed several years ago to look at the academic standards issue.

In response to the new complaints about exclusion, former Kentucky Commissioner of Education and current CCSSO chief Gene Wilhoit promises that the next phase of the standards creation process will be opened up considerably.

So, it’s too early to determine if another education turf war is about to break out. However, it is obvious that Wilhoit and his counterpart at the NGA have some rather ruffled feathers to deal with going into the next phase of this process. Whether those feathers get smoothed or not remains a very interesting, and unanswered, question.

Uncovering missing records in Whitley County

If citizens don't keep good records, they can get arrested by the sheriff. But if they live in Whitley County, they would be arrested by a sheriff's department committing the same offense. And the only reason we know about it is because the state auditor's office happened to investigate.

Around $125,000 went missing from the department, according to a report by the State Auditor's Office.

Kentucky's Public Employee Benefits Growing Liability

In May 2006 the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center released a short summary on Retiree Crisis Looms as Pension and Health Care Benefits Vanish. In that summary, an aggregate unfunded liability of nearly $296 billion was reported in a survey conduced by the National Association of State Retirement Administrators and National Council on Teacher Retirement. Failure to make actuarially sound investments was cited as the root of most shortfalls. Since the time the investment market has suffered severe declines and our financial infrastructure is in question.

In an April 6, 2009, Kentucky.com article, State pension funds feel hit, the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College estimated that pension funds now need $270 billion in additional contributions over the next year and more than $100 billion annually for two decades. States' pensions have collectively lost over $1 trillion in the market over the past year. Kentucky's pension shortfall is estimated around $27 billion.

Millions of private sector workers are unemployed. The public sector workforce has not been proportionally reduced. Is it right or fair to expect Kentuckians to shoulder through more taxes the ever increasing burden of the rich benefits enjoyed by the state and local public workers, police and teachers?

Isn't it time for Kentucky's leaders to really address the rich public employee benefit problem like they were accountable to keep Kentucky fiscally viable?

Should Kentucky be 'tricking people out of their money' to balance its budget?

Gov. Steve Beshear continues to claim gambling will solve Kentucky's budget woes.

I tried to put some perspective on this view in a recent Bluegrass Beacon column:

"Shouldn’t we feel bad about having to compete economically at the lowest level by tricking people out of their money and penalizing people who make bad bets?"

Institute wants prevailing-wage policy added to special session's agenda

State leaders and fiscal watchdogs Monday criticized the commonwealth’s antiquated and costly system for paying for public construction projects as a special session of the Legislature convened to address the budget shortfall.

Click here to read entire news release.

Just Not Right

– Boone County High School awards graduation ceremony tickets by CATS scores

Some educators never got it about our old CATS assessment. The scores never had high levels of accuracy for individual students. In fact, the test was never designed to generate highly accurate scores for individual students.

This was all discussed last winter when Senate Bill 1, which dumped CATS, was being developed.

But, some educators never got the message. In a coercive attempt to get kids to do their best on the CATS, the Boone County High School in Northern Kentucky has been awarding limited seats to its graduation ceremonies according to how well individual students scored on the CATS.

Given that CATS can’t provide high accuracy scores for individual students, this practice seems so “not right.” The fact that this nonsense is going on in one of the state’s most upscale school districts shows how education myths and deceptions have penetrated everywhere in Kentucky. It’s disrespectful of students and their parents.

The Boone County High School needs to rethink what it is doing.

And, if this nonsense is going on elsewhere in Kentucky, we’d like to hear about it.

The Special Session Begins

Legislators in Frankfort are spending your tax dollars to debate spending your tax dollars to solve the problem of not enough of your tax dollars to spend.

KERA Math?

We’ve all seen or heard the ads – Kentucky’s governor claims the state’s horse industry employs 100,000 people.

Now, the Lexington Herald-Leader sets that record straight – the real number is only about half of that amount.

I guess this is the sort of thing we must expect after two decades of our kids not being taught decent math skills. Sooner or later, it permeates everything so that facts don’t matter.

Fortunately, at least one person is left at the Herald-Leader who can count.

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.

Search for Education Commissioner Scores “Novice” for Secrecy

– But, we are spending twice as much on it

The search is on for a new Kentucky Commissioner of Education – again.

And, once again, it’s being conducted in secret.

We went through a secret process in 2007. The public wasn’t given the candidates’ names until there were just three finalists left. Then, there was scarcely time for the public to begin considering those three people before the Kentucky Board of Education announced its final selection was Barbara Erwin.

Erwin’s selection came as a number of reporters, bloggers and yours truly were uncovering all sorts of embellishments in her resume. In the end, it turned out that anyone willing to spend a little time on the Internet and making a few phone calls could see that Ms. Erwin’s resume was loaded with “errors.”

In the end, Erwin never served one day as active commissioner.

Erwin’s replacement was Jon Draud. He was forced to resign after suffering a stroke less than a year later. By that time, the Courier-Journal indicates the state had spent $60,000 on commissioner searches since the Erwin process started.

Now, with a new price tag of $120,000, the Kentucky Board of Education is at its secret search game again.

The Courier quotes board chair Joe Brothers, "I do expect that at some point, one or more finalists will be publicly vetted. We just haven't discussed that as a board yet." So, there isn’t even a loose promise that the public will get to see the finalists’ names.

After the Erwin fiasco, I would be surprised if the board does as casual a job as they did before. If only to protect their own reputations, I would imagine individual board members are at least checking the Internet and making a few phone calls on their own. We might be in better shape than we were in 2007.

Still, the history lesson from 2007 is very clear – transparency matters, and allowing the public adequate time to have a say leads to more informed decisions and can help avoid huge mistakes. So far, the Kentucky Board of Education seems to still be in the “Novice” performance category on that learning exercise.

Kentucky Forward needs to shift tax policies into reverse

No government in history ever spent -- or taxed -- its way to prosperity.

Click here to read entire column.

Non-Instructional Issues Driving Our Schools

– Even State School Board is incredulous!

Can you believe it?

Kentucky schools regularly chop academic classes in two just so kids can go to lunch! Students get something like 20 to 25 minutes with a teacher – then break for lunch – and then have to come back to the same teacher to finish the remaining class period.

It’s education nonsense at its very worst.

This shocker surfaced during a presentation on what the badly troubled Covington Independent School District is doing to turn its performance around. One of the Covington principals proudly proclaimed that this horrible practice had been ended in the school.

Former Kentucky legislator and new state board member David Karem was incredulous that this had ever happened. Splitting classes into such short blocks is educational heresy. The idea that this non-instructional lunch issue would override the best interests of good education disturbed other board members, as well.

And, it turns out this hasn’t just been a problem in Covington.

Later in the meeting, while the Union County School District was discussing what they are doing about their troubled system, Karem asked one of that district’s presenters if they had ever split a class period for lunch.

His eyes really popped when Union County admitted they had also done this. In fact, the presenters were not sure if all schools in the district had ended this crazy practice.

So, here is some advice for the Kentucky Board of Education.

Have the Kentucky Department of Education survey all the school districts. Find out which have done similar things in the past and if any still are doing this.

If this practice is still being conducted, or if it looks like it might start up again, get a regulation out to ban doing this. Our kids deserve no less, and academic malpractice like this certainly should fall under the board’s authority to act.

For our readers, if you know of a school that splits class periods for lunch, please comment in this blog. Do it anonymously if you want, but do mention the school and district.

Newsweek Nonsense

– Magazine ranks one of Kentucky’s poorest performing high schools among the country’s best

Newsweek magazine’s 2009 ranking of high schools is out, and once again there is a Kentucky example of how fouled up this magazine’s rating process actually is.

The case in point is Holmes High School in the Covington Independent School District. Holmes is actually ranked 570 out of all American high schools by the Newsweek nonsense system.

The facts are that Holmes is a perfect example of a school that caters to an elite few who get AP courses (which are the basis of the Newsweek rankings) while very poorly serving all the rest of the students.

For example, Kentucky now tests all of our 11th grade students with the ACT college entrance test. Holmes only outscored 25 of the 232 Kentucky high schools that had scores reported in 2008. That’s all.

Only one high school had a lower school accountability index than Holmes on Kentucky’s CATS assessment in 2008 – just one. As a consequence, the school is in the very worst CATS assessment category – Assistance Level 3 – in Kentucky.

Now, it’s no secret the Bluegrass Institute doesn’t think highly of CATS, but that is because it is too watered down. Any school that manages to mess up on the overly lax CATS is clearly highly problematic.

Actually, things are so bad that the Kentucky Board of Education is running a special monitoring program for the school and the Covington district. The latest hearings were just held today during the board’s June 11, 2009 meeting. I know. I was there.

As an aside, I must mention that I liked what I heard about Covington Independent’s plans to turn their schools around. Covington’s new superintendent made some correct, but difficult, choices that include closing some schools and replacing several principals. However, the fact still remains that there is a long road ahead in this process. Right now, Covington isn’t a top performer – it isn’t even a middling performer.

Returning to my main point, the new Education Week “Graduations Counts” on line search tool shows Holmes had a graduation rate in 2006 of only 48.1 percent, far below the US average of 69.2 percent. This is a very significant drop from the 80.2 percent grad rate the district and its lone high school had in 1996.

EdWeek’s graduation rates may be a little low, but they are not that far off. The key point is that Newsweek’s rankings are developed by dividing the number of Advanced Placement courses taken by the number of graduates. If a lot of kids have dropped out before graduating, the Newsweek formula gets grossly inflated. Making Holmes look good because it drops out a lot of kids isn’t my idea of a solid ranking system.

To be sure, the AP tests are important, but using them the way Newsweek does is a great disservice to many students and educators. The fact that one of Kentucky’s poorest performing high schools wound up as a top performer on the Newsweek list is ample evidence of the problems in that ranking scheme.

Newsweek should discontinue its highly inaccurate rating program, and Kentuckians would be wise not to be fooled by this nonsense.

A Scary Proposition

A new group called "Kentucky Forward" offers a tax-reform proposal that raises taxes on many Kentucky business owners and upper-income individuals. Commentator Jim Waters calls it "a scary proposition." Click here to listen to the commentary.

Representative Moberly Out as Chair of Important Education Committee

– Powerful, little known committee also conducts other business

There were a number of important events at today’s meeting of the Kentucky legislature’s small but powerful Education Assessment and Accountability Review Subcommittee (EAARS).

Perhaps the most notable item was the vote that replaced Representative Harry Moberly with Representative Kent Stevens as EAARS co-chair. This marks a major shifting of the guard and a further reduction of Moberly’s once considerable influence in education matters. Moberly remains a member of the EAARS, which will probably benefit from his considerable corporate memory on education issues.

Senator Jack Westwood, the incumbent Kentucky senate co-chair on the committee, was reelected to his position.

The EAARS received a report on the progress and planning to implement Senate Bill 1, which replaces the state’s CATS public school assessment. There is a lot to do before Kentucky’s new assessment and accountability program can be put in place, but EAARS members were pleased by the wide turnout and positive attitude of interested parties from both the P to 12 public school community and the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE) and related groups. The CPE oversees our public colleges.

Two documents on planned Senate Bill 1 actions were presented to the committee and are available on line in the freedomkentucky.org Wiki site.

The first document is the “Senate Bill 1 Summary of Completed Work as of June 4, 2009.” It contains an extensive listing of required tasks with the anticipated start and stop dates and current status.

The second document outlines the “Comprehensive Process for the Revision of K – 12 to College Entry-Level Course Content Standards.”

EAARS members noted that cooperation and interest on the part of both the K – 12 and college groups have been less than desirable in the past, but the current level of interest bodes well for the important business of bringing our state’s education program into the 21st Century.

However, Senator Dan Kelly noted with some concern the absence from the meeting of Education Secretary Helen Mountjoy. Kelly pointed out that a successful revision to our standards and assessments is going to take a widespread collaborative effort, and Ms. Mountjoy’s involvement, including interaction with the EAARS, is important.

The final presentation of the day was from the Kentucky Office of Education Accountability, which presented a draft update to its “Kentucky Data Profiles Report” from last year (the older report is on line here.)

This report contains a lot of useful information for each Kentucky school district in a compact and standardized form. Overall, it is a valuable resource.

It’s obvious that high school graduation rates are on everyone’s mind these days, as questions about the formula used to calculate the graduation rate data in the new OEA report were raised by Senator Jack Westwood. Subsequent to the meeting, I discussed those problems with OEA head Marcia Seiler. Ms. Seiler is going to check this out in greater detail and indicated there is still time to modify the report prior to final release. Hopefully, the issues can be corrected so that this highly useful report will more accurately present the graduation data.

Constitutional convenience

Former Kentucky Attorney General Ben Chandler issued an opinion saying that expanding casino gambling would require a constitutional amendment. However, the Associated Press reports today that Gov. Beshear has "ordered lammakers to consider" his plan to allow "racinos" -- video slot terminals -- at horse racing tracks during a special session scheduled to begin Monday in Frankfort.

How convenient to pay attention to the Constitution when it serves your purpose but to ignore it when it's inconvenient toward your political ambitions.

How convenient to promote "racinos" as a way to help "Kentucky's struggling signature horse industry" but also offer a plan that puts more money into the hands of polticians to spend.

Becoming addicted to gambling to solve our state’s economic woes is like sticking a Band-Aid on an oozing wound or better, like entering a $5,000 claimer in a stakes race. It’s a sucker bet.

Where's My Bailout?

Leave it to Reason TV to produce this "extraordinary, persistent, detailed" and really funny report on bailouts for the rest of us. And of course, Kentuckians need a bailout because as Frankfort declared recently, "we've got to have revenue from someplace". Oh, wait. Kentucky already got a bailout.

Infinite Campus Student Software Security Issue?

– Student changes grades in a school’s computers

The Courier-Journal is reporting on a student who is being denied access to her graduation ceremony after she conspired with another student to change grades in the Jeffersonville High School’s computer system.

While this incident apparently took place up in Indiana, it provides another case in point that some students will work very hard to compromise computer systems – especially those that have things like their grades in them – and there is a history of students sometimes succeeding.

We need to insure that Kentucky’s new Infinite Campus computer system, which now tracks student grades here, is more robust than the system used in Clark County, Indiana. Infinite Campus holds a lot more sensitive information besides just student grades, and a compromise could have serious consequences for parents as well as their student children.

(Corrects earlier version of this post which assumed the high school in question was in Kentucky as the Courier article did not identify the state where the school is located)

No KERA in Indiana

The Indiana Supreme Court has thrown out a lawsuit similar to the one that brought KERA to Kentucky back in the 1989-90 time frame.

Editorial Mistakes Implications of Rising College Graduations

– Daily Independent editor must not know all the facts

We’ve already discussed the recent rise in college degree awards in Kentucky’s public universities here and here.

While this is a good sign for our college system, it doesn’t necessarily follow that our public elementary and secondary system is also doing a lot better.

In fact, other readily available information from the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education shows our K to 12 system probably didn’t make much of a contribution to better college degree performance. The figure below, which we have used before, shows the percentage of recent high school graduates who needed remedial courses when they went on to college.


Except for the English remedial area, there has been scant improvement in this data over time.

Still, I suspected some would misinterpret the recent rise in college diplomas, and I wasn’t disappointed. On June 5, 2009, the Daily Independent from Ashland ran an editorial saying, “The increased number of degrees also is a positive indication that students fresh out of high school are arriving on campuses better prepared to do college work.”

Well, the graph above seriously challenges the Independent’s opinion. And, the graph has been around since April. And, the data in the graph from 2002 and 2004 have been around for years. So, someone isn't paying attention.

Anyway, what is more likely happening is that those extensively supplied college remedial courses are having some effect.

I talked to Dr. Ed Hughes, president of the Gateway Community and Technical College in Northern Kentucky, not long ago, and he indicated that if students stay in the remedial (which the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education [CPE] likes to call “developmental”) courses, the students often do better at completing a degree than those kids who enter without an apparent need for remedial courses.

This area needs more research, which, as I mentioned earlier, will hopefully come when the CPE releases more information in this area later this year.

More on the Increase in Diploma Awards in Kentucky

This graph shows the five-year percentage change in Bachelor degree awards in Kentucky’s public universities.


We mentioned earlier that most Kentucky schools showed an increase in degree awards, with the one notable exception of Kentucky State University.

This graph shows that, but it also shows that the most dramatic increase in Bachelors degree awards occurred in only two schools, Eastern Kentucky University and Northern Kentucky University.

I hope someone is looking into that, especially since I know Northern has always struggled for allocations from the down-state-centric interests in Frankfort. Northern seems to be doing it better, and maybe cheaper, but I have to look into that more to be sure.

Try Madison - James, not Wisconsin - to get your head straight

A Lexington Herald-Leader writer thinks Kentuckians have a bad attitude. Bluegrass Institute columnist Jim Waters knows why.
Click here to read the entire column.

Good College News

– With one important caution


There is very good news from Kentucky’s public postsecondary education system – degree and certificate awards are generally up across the state.

The Courier-Journal reports “Kentucky's public and independent postsecondary institutions conferred 30,178 degrees, diplomas and certificates during spring commencement exercises -- a 7 percent increase compared with last year and a 40 percent increase since 2004, a preliminary report shows.”

The newspaper says both Masters and Doctoral awards rose 20 percent in one year, as well. In the same one-year period Bachelors degree awards increased six percent and Associate degree awards went up 15 percent.

So, overall, the news looks very good.

However, the paper does not discuss some bad news buried in an attachment to the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education’s (CPE) news release. That attachment lists a school by school breakdown of the awards.

One school, Kentucky State University, stands out sharply as going against the trend of improvement. The five-year change in all degree awards, Associate, Baccalaureate and Masters/Specialist, are down. The difference from the general trend is quite pronounced, and this certainly warrants discussion as to why this has happened.

But, overall, things are looking somewhat better for the state’s public postsecondary system. I’d like to see further breakdowns of the degree awards by race, sex, degree types, and whether the increase is mostly due to more Kentucky kids or out of state kids succeeding in their studies. That might be available when the CPE releases their full report later this year.

Duplicity - not Swine Flu - is the killer in Kentucky

This morning Gov. Beshear added a "proposal" to the growing list of issues he wants the Kentucky general assembly to tackle this month in a special legislative session: Placing Video Lottery Terminals (VLTs) at race tracks.

Why? To save the horse industry? (Duplicity = Saying one thing but meaning another.) VLTs? - these are the gambling machines that used to sit in truck stops until Frankfort closed them down ("Without a cut, we shut you down!").

Now Beshear wants them at the race tracks because it creates a new stream of tax revenues so Frankfort can continue to feed its ravenous appetite for MORE AND MORE AND MORE MONEY. Watch the Frankfort duplicity doctors spin this multiple ways, but in the end they want more of our money to waste on their pet projects.

ZAP! An electric car made in Whitley County?

In 2008, the residents of Simpson County were mesmerized with the idea of an electric car company building ZAP cars and employing thousands. As it turned out, GE Capital had intended to loan the project money until it was discovered that GE was short of money, too. So the project predictably died. In fact, the project lacked equity capital, the real green stuff possessed by real entrepreneurs with real venture capital.

So is an entrepreneur in Whitley County bellying up to the bar? Don't hold your breath. According to "No Gas Required", the State of Kentucky will provide $15 million in incentives if the company, Sirius Energies Corporation, comes up with $33 million. Hey, Corbinites, before you roll out the red carpet, check out the Sirius checkbook to see if it's full of cobwebs, too. If you don't, you're likely to get ZAPPED!

Not addressing our entitlement problem

State Budget Director Mary Lassiter just told the Joint Budget Committee that Medicaid spending continues to increase but that federal "stimulus" funds will cover the excess in FY 2010.

So we're back into the soup in 2011. The only difference is that we will be in much deeper and we aren't doing anything about it.

Keep both hands on your wallet

On Gov. Beshear calling Kentucky's general assembly into action on June 15, Mark Twain (1835-1910) had this to say, "No one's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session."

Why does Beshear wants more of your money this time?

* Preserving SEEK funding for Tier 5 public schools (no improvement six years in a row) that refuse to implement improvement plans. “'I’ll say it again and again – we cannot move forward if we take significant steps backward in spending in our classrooms,' Gov. Beshear said of his proposal." Throwing more and more money at failing schools sounds like California. Is that where Beshear has Kentucky headed?

Mark Twain also said, "Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its one sure defense."

* Maintaining current funding for economic development efforts and increasing funding for state parks. Is there a subsidy program that Beshear has not fallen in love with? Why must taxpayers who have never visited a state park be forced to increase the subsidy for parks that fewer and fewer Kentuckians visit?

Again from Mark Twain, "What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin."

Gates Praises Charter Schools

In his first “annual letter” discussing the work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, founder Bill Gates had nice things to say about charter schools such as the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) schools (subscription).

At the same time, Gates openly admitted the foundation's smaller high school program didn’t work out. Gates said, “We had less success trying to change an existing school than helping to create a new school.”

Gates also said states should revise their laws that put caps on the number of charter schools. In Kentucky’s case, that cap is absolute – we don’t even allow these excellent school choices.

Home School Numbers Rising Sharply

A relatively new report from the Institute of Education Sciences at the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) shows a dramatic 77 percent rise in the number of students who are being home schooled in the nation. In 1999 the report shows 850,000 students were being primarily or completely schooled at home. By 2007, the number had significantly increased to 1,508,000.

The figure below shows the percentage of school age kids made up of home schooled students for the three survey years of the study.


NCES says the prime reasons for choosing home schooling include,

• Concern about the school environment,

• To provide religious or moral instruction, and

• Dissatisfaction with the academic instruction available at other schools.

More home schooling facts are found in a new USA Today article. The newspaper reports:

• The ratio of home-schooled boys to girls has shifted significantly. In 1999, it was 49% boys, 51% girls. Now boys account for only 42%; 58% are girls.

• 3.9% of white families home-school, up from 2% in 1999.

• 6.8% of college-educated parents home-school, up from 4.9% in 1999.

Charters Outperform Regular Schools in New Data from the Big Apple

Don’t try to tell New Yorkers that charter schools don’t work.

The New York Post reports new data shows “A record 90.7 percent of students in the city's charter schools aced this year's state math tests -- a rate nearly 9 percentage points higher than the city's traditional public schools and more than 4 points higher than the statewide average.”

Furthermore, the Post reports that charters have closed the pervasive gap with “upstate” school systems and for the many minorities in New York City.

Meanwhile, Kentucky doesn’t even allow charters. What a shame for our kids!

Future High School Dropouts Can Be Spotted By the Fourth Grade

It’s not news to us, but the popular press is running an Associated Press (AP) article about the fact that high school dropouts can often be spotted by the fourth grade as though this is a stunning new revelation (this article also ran in many other news sources such as Education Week [subscription]).

This will be a revelation to others here. We heard a lot from the KERA Amen Chorus in the recent past about how we have to focus on our high schools in order to improve graduation rates.

In contrast, the Chorus told us that things were much better in the lower level schools.

However, after looking at other research, the Bluegrass Institute has always felt the dropout problem starts in elementary schools. Our now defunct CATS assessments simply were not telling us the truth about what was happening even though they apparently did fool the KERA Amen Chorus.

Now, the AP and a bunch of newspapers around the country apparently get it, too. So, yet another education fad belief – that the dropout problems were mostly in our high schools – now is headed for the trash bin.

Diplomas and Dropouts

– Data in new report shows Kentucky ranks low for college graduation rates

A new report from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is bound to raise eyebrows in Kentucky, especially once people see the ranking of college graduation rates I assembled below from the data in that report.


Of course, this ranking shouldn’t be a huge surprise. After all, Kentucky’s college freshmen require remedial courses at an astonishingly high rate.

Among Kentucky schools, the worst graduation rate was for Spalding University, where only 24 percent graduated from the entering class of 2001. However, other schools had single-digit rates, so this was not the worst performance in the country.

At the other end of the Kentucky spectrum, Transylvania and Center College tied for the best rate of 73 percent. The top rate in the country was 100 percent at the Arkansas Baptist College while a number of other schools posted rates above 90 percent.

One of the really big disappointments in the new report is the University of Louisville’s very poor ranking among comparably competitive schools in the South. U of L ranked third from the bottom of all “Very Competitive” colleges in the “South” region with a rather dismal 44 percent graduation rate.

The report even singles out U of L as an example of a place where something is amiss, comparing this school to James Madison University in Virginia. Both schools have virtually identical enrollments, tuition rates, and recruitment competitiveness, but James Madison graduates 81 percent of its students.

In fact, the average graduation rate across the country for similarly competitive schools is 62.3 percent.

Someone really needs to look into what’s wrong with U of L.

For more details, see our new Wiki item titled “Kentucky College Graduation Rates Versus Other States.”

Left wing think tanks: who needs them

Washington D.C.-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities spends almost six minutes on this podcast to tell you states need to tax you more for your own good.

You can listen to the whole thing if you want, but 5:05 to 5:15 pretty much gives you what they have in mind.

It's good stuff if you need to be able to say that a nonpartisan think tank says states need more money, but it doesn't do much for the rest of us who watch our pennies and can't understand why government won't do the same.

Caroline Hoxby on Charter Schools

Harvard professor Caroline Hoxby is one of the more knowledgeable researchers on charter schools in the country. If you want to see an excerpt of what she has to say about these public schools (no, charters are not private schools!) to better understand why the US Secretary of Education is pushing them, click on this You Tube.

Is your Grandma an "inefficiency?"

A health care report out today from President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers says Medicare costs could be lowered by about one-third by leveling the differences in costs per patient between the states and between the U.S. and other nations.

Looks like they are talking about little more than rationing care to me. In fact, I read the whole report looking for anything substantial and didn't find it. Try it yourself. The closest thing to a policy suggestion is the ridiculous proposal to require insurance companies to accept all applicants with the same coverages and premiums. Some may remember Kentucky trying that in 1994.

Another Education Fad Bites the Dust

After spending “billions” to develop small enrollment high schools, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has abandoned that idea. The Gates organization found out that better teachers, not class size, are the key to better student learning.

Here in Kentucky the dubious “small school” fad was pushed by members of the “KERA Amen Chorus” (as the Paducah Sun dubbed them a number of years ago) even though there have been doubts about this education fad for some time.

Of course, Kentuckians have heard a bunch of claims from the KERA Amen Chorus ever since 1990. Time and again Chorus members have said “research shows” this or that expensive education fad works great. Far too often, those rosy claims have proved either overblown or downright totally incorrect. The reason is that most education research isn’t very well done and cannot prove anything with reasonable accuracy.

Still, we hear the same groups pushing more and more expensive fads at a time when we need to home in on efficiency and effectiveness. Per the Gates crowd, that means getting really well prepared teachers in front of our kids, something the Bluegrass Institute agrees is badly needed, but in too many cases sorely lacking.

In fact, the education system doesn’t even do a good job of identifying which teachers could use more training and which ones might be best qualified to provide it.

Maybe if the KERA Amen Chorus now gets behind truly effective upgrades for our teaching staff, our kids might see some real benefits.

This isn't in the KY Constitution, either

From a Gov. Steve Beshear statement:

"We will do whatever we can as a state to ensure the viability and longevity of the (General Motors) Bowling Green Assembly Plant."

Really, Governor? Why not send the money to Toyota in Georgetown instead? They seem to have a better idea of what to do with it.

Grade Inflation – For Teachers!

It looks like grade inflation on student tests isn’t the only issue where “Lake Woebegon” effects are alive and well in our education system.

That name refers to humorist Garrison Keelor’s mythical town where all children are above average. The name has been associated for some time with inflated test score results, but up until now it has only been applied to student performances.

Now, a new Lake Woebegon effect has been discovered, and this time it is the scores that tenured teachers get on their annual evaluations that are in question. The resulting overly rosy picture can have adverse effects for both teachers and students as things like improvement training, granting of tenure, and granting of bonuses are all impacted.

Read about this new feel good inflationary system in our public schools here.

Kentucky Signs Up for Voluntary National Standards

What began with only about half the states participating has now expanded to become almost a 100 percent nationwide effort. The Washington Post reports that 46 states and several US territories have signed on to a program to develop common education standards.

This effort was started by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). Kentucky joined it after passage of Senate Bill 1 last spring, as we mentioned in a previous Blog item.

By the way, the CCSSO is headed by former Kentucky Commissioner of Education Gene Wilhoit.

Anyway, regardless of the number of states now participating, the key question is whether or not the results will really be what our kids need.

Hopeful signs include participation of some very excellent organizations such as the Educational Testing Service (which does the SAT college entrance test) and the ACT, Incorporated, which does the ACT college entrance test.

However, it also looks like the effort is going to “duck” some critical questions about how to best teach math and reading as it tries to smooth easily ruffled feathers. And, those feathers may not smooth easily.

The Post quotes Michael J. Petrilli from the Thomas B. Fordham Institution as saying, "There are fundamental disagreements in our society about what kids should learn." That’s definitely true. How well the NGA/CCSSO can overcome contested issues in education is far from certain.

Certainly, comments I am already seeing in various liberal and conservative oriented Listservs indicate a battle royal may be forming.

By the way, the Post also messes up on one important point. My understanding is states that join the NGA/CCSSO effort have agreed to adopt at least 85 percent of the final package of standards. So, good or bad, it looks like these “national” standards are coming to Kentucky.

Bluegrass Institute on TV's 'Kentucky Tonight'

Jim Waters, Bluegrass Institute director of policy and communications, will appear tonight on KET's "Kentucky Tonight" at 8 p.m. (EST) to address Gov. Steve Beshear's call for a special legislative session. The program is hosted by Bill Goodman live on KET1 and will be replayed Wednesday at 2 a.m. (EST).

During the live Monday broadcast, viewers with questions and comments may participate by e-mail at kytonight@ket.org.

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.

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.

It's not a billion

The Frankfort tax increase brigade is on the offensive this morning with an editorial repeating the silly claim that the state has a $1 billion revenue shortfall.



This is nothing more than a marketing scheme for bigger government. If it were a real emergency, far more would be done to reduce wasteful spending. Indeed, the shortfall itself is mostly an illusion.

Predictably, the editorial quickly goes in for the kill:

"The next round of reductions will inflict real damage to programs that are critically important to many, particularly those most vulnerable during an economic downturn."

"Given that reality, the legislature must also look at the revenue side of the budget."

The Courier Journal may be convinced, but for those of us who look at the numbers and see a 2010 budget $867 million larger than the one in 2009, we are going to need much more than the standard poor-mouthing.