Alternative school losing $100,000???

– Or is it alternative school grabbed $100,000 too much each year???

According to the State Journal, the Kentucky Educational Collaborative for State Agency Children (KECSAC) was created in 1992 to provide extra funding for, “children who had been placed in day treatment facilities, group homes and residential programs by the Cabinet for Health and Family Services. Youth in the custody of the Department of Juvenile Justice or its facilities also qualify.”

The key is that the funding only is to flow to children who are specifically placed in special schooling situations by a state agency or by the justice system.

But, that didn’t stop some special schools who serve agency children and who also admit other kids with problems from claiming the money for all of their enrolled students regardless of whether those students met the legal requirement of statute to receive KECSAC funds.

Now, the State Journal reports that the KECSAC will no longer pay the extra, undeserved money. For one single school in Frankfort that enrolls only 50 kids total, but where only about 10 are true state agency children, the error ran up payments by $100,000 a year.

Statewide, the Journal article indicates about one in four special schools got similar overpayments because students were not properly identified according to the statute. Clearly, the total amount of misdirected money is considerable.

One of the really sad things here is that the overpayments for too many kids diluted the support that the true state agency kids actually received. This also shortchanged those special schools that played the game honestly and didn’t over-claim their state agency student population.

Now, finally, almost 20 years after the KECSAC was started, the money will only go to the state agency children that deserve it, which will notably increase the support to these children.

Sadly, the State Journal’s headline couldn’t get it more incorrect. Schools like the one in Frankfort are not “losing” anything. They provided inflated data that resulted in their being illegally overpaid. It was the kids who were really supposed to get support, the other schools that reported honestly, and the taxpayer, as always, that turned out to be the losers here.

The truth is that Frankfort, and its newspaper, owe those true state agency kids and the honest schools that serve them an apology.

High school graduation rates are inflated in New York City

– And in Kentucky, too

Says the New York Daily News,

“Calling it the ‘Enron of American education,’ Comptroller William Thompson Tuesday accused the Education Department of manipulating data to boost graduation rates.”

Yeah, but that’s New York City, you say.

Well, right here in Kentucky we continue to get bloated high school graduation statistics based on a discredited calculation that uses discredited dropout statistics – a process that was officially audited in 2006 and found to be well off the mark.

Still, three years later, no-one but the Bluegrass Institute and the State Auditor of Public Accounts seems to care.

Since the Kentucky Board of Education and the Kentucky Department of Education won’t do it (I tried), when will the legislature finally step in and demand a better quality high school graduation rate calculation?

Jefferson County school assignment plan continues to generate backlash

The backlash to the new busing plan for Jefferson County Public Schools is generating increasing backlash. The Courier-Journal reports that the lawsuit started by two parents of five-year olds who were going to be bused 20 to 28 miles to school each day, one way, has now been joined by a third outraged parent.

At last count late Thursday evening, the Courier’s article had nearly 150 comments, which is a huge number of reader reactions for this newspaper. Skimming through them in a mostly subjective way, it seemed like the vast majority were unfavorable to the bus plan, the school district, or both.

I also learned something else.

One of the three parents suing the district was told his child would be forced to travel about 20 miles away to the Shelby Elementary school instead of the local area school.

Now, that is really curious.

According to the “NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND, Adequate Yearly Progress, 2008 School and District Results, August 5, 2008 Release” Shelby Elementary School is in Tier 3 status under No Child Left Behind. That means as of the summer of 2008 this school has failed to make adequate yearly progress for four years in a row.

Quite important to the current discussion, parents of students already in that school had to be offered the right to transfer their students out to better performing schools.

Now, along comes the school district, and without blinking an eye, it requires the five-year old in question – to be bused IN to this school from all the way across town – and the parent can’t say NO!

I may have more to say on this once the Kentucky Department of Education fixes its Web site area for the individual NCLB school report cards.

Dropout rate dramatically reduced in Bell schools???

The Middlesboro Daily News reports the Bell County Public Schools dramatically reduced their high school dropout rate in the 2007-08 school year.

The problem here is that those dropout rates are notoriously inaccurate.

This 2006 official audit says so.

In fact, Bell County shows up in the audit as one of the most serious dropout under-reporters in Kentucky. Actual dropouts during the school term in the county were over 270 percent higher than what got reported to the Kentucky Department of Education.

Adding more fuel to my concerns, I ran the numbers for Bell County’s high school graduation rate using the “Freshman Graduation Rate” formula, which is one of the best performing approximation formulas in this federal study.

The graph shows how that turned out.


It’s hard to have a decreasing dropout rate when your graduation rate is also decreasing.

Data sources for the graph are the Kentucky Department of Education’s Excel spreadsheets for Transition to Adult Life (which shows the total of all diplomas and certificates of attendance awarded each year) and the Department’s Growth Factor/Ethnicity Reports for the appropriate years for each ninth grade enrollment for each graduating class.

I really hope Bell County is helping more kids, but the numbers I see certainly don’t show that.

Attorney General smacks Jefferson County Board of Education

– Says secret evaluation of superintendent violated Kentucky law

The Kentucky Attorney General’s office has issued an opinion regarding the recent secret evaluations of Jefferson County Public Schools superintendent Shelly Berman, which we commented on earlier here and here.

Says the A-G, Berman's secret evaluation violates Kentucky law.

For some compelling reasons why the local board of education, which publicly gave Berman a glowing report, might want to hide the superintendent’s evaluation, consider this performance information, which comes from an earlier blog.


Enrollment data on school membership from the Kentucky Department of Education shows there were 648,628 students in Kentucky’s public schools in the 2007-08 school year. In that year 93,941 students – just 14.5 percent – attended Jefferson County schools. Yet, as this graph shows, the district has a much higher proportion of schools in trouble both under No Child Left Behind and under the state's own assessment program.

Needed: Spending reform

The economic double-talk of state political leaders offers the impression that state government is shrinking. Actually, state spending is virtually on autopilot to increase each year. Commentator Jim Waters says it's time to turn off the autopilot.

Click here to listen to the commentary.

Birds of a feather have under-prepared students together

Back in the early days of KERA, another state, Maryland, ran a very parallel reform effort. Most of the same radical ideas that we were trying in Kentucky were also being attempted in Maryland’s schools. In fact, the two states even collaborated on reports about their testing systems because they were so similar.

Now, it looks like the results of these parallel education experiments worked out about the same. The Baltimore Sun reports that Maryland now has alarmingly high college freshman remediation rates, numbers that seem eerily close to those for Kentucky.

Imagine that. Same experiments – same results.

This graph shows the remedial rates for recent high school graduates in Kentucky, but it sounds like the graph doesn’t look much different in Maryland.

Source: Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education

Current economic turmoil calls for Friedman’s approach: less government, more liberty

The late Nobel laureate Milton Friedman will be remembered at an event at Western Kentucky University this week as one of the great champions of freedom in our time.

Click here to read entire press release.

Charting a course away from transparent government

Check out Texas Rep. Kevin Brady’s chart on how much government will grow if Washington’s big spenders get their way on health care. (The chart was too large to paste here, but it's worth a view.)

Congressional lefties claim the chart is misleading and are attempting to prevent Brady and 20 of his fellow representatives from using public dollars – as congressmen normally do – to mail the chart to their constituents.

But in this day of the Internet, if Iran’s two-bit dictator can’t keep the world from seeing freedom-loving protestors die in Tehran’s streets, then neither can House Speaker Nancy Pelosi keep YOU from finding out about the latest assault on freedom-loving Americans’ liberty.

By the way, it occurred to me while reading a comment included by a congressional aide in Roll Call’s story about the chart flap that Pelosi and Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear have more in common than just the political party they hail from (which we care very little about at the Bluegrass Policy Blog anyhow).

The aide said: “I’d like to see the flow chart on how Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi plans on implementing the open and transparent government she keeps promising everyone.”

Whoa! Come to think of it, neither has such a flow chart been produced by Beshear, who made the same exact promise.

Expensive hall monitor

The Springfield Sun reports that the Washington County School Board has approved hiring a “School Administration Manager” for the district’s high school at a minimum (could be higher) starting salary of $39,846. Supposedly, this person will free up the school’s principals’ (news article shows plural) time for more important efforts.

The new manager’s duties could include “supervision during hall changes and during class time, help with discipline referrals, truancy, supervising evening events, and assisting with lunchroom supervision.”

In other words – the “manager” is pretty much just a hall monitor, and one whose job doesn’t sound like it requires a college degree.

Still, freeing up principal time might not be so bad – if the cost were not so high.

The Kentucky Department of Education’s CERTIFIED SALARY SCHEDULE for 2008-2009 shows that a new starting teacher with an approved four-year bachelor’s degree in the Washington County system (Officially: Rank III with zero years of experience) is paid only $35,459. That teacher won’t reach the minimum pay for the new School Administration Manager until after 10 years of service!

In fact, the new School Administration Manager will start at a higher salary than Washington County pays a Rank II teacher (who has a master’s degree) with three years of experience.

That’s sounds like an awfully expensive hall monitor, especially once you throw in overtime for those evening event chores.

So, it’s great pay for the hall monitor; but, it’s bound to upset the teachers.

And, it’s going to further erode Kentucky’s already bottom of the stack position for one of the worst staff to teacher ratios of any state in the nation.

Taxes, tolls or tighter spending?

I get the creeps each time I am forced to drive across the aging Interstate75/71 Brent Spence Bridge connecting Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati. The problem is, replacing a bridge of that magnitude – estimated cost: $3 billion – is among the costliest of transportation projects. It's going to cost up to $3 billion to replace the bridge.

Some local politicians, including Kenton County Judge-executive Ralph Drees, want higher taxes instead. Specifically, Drees wants the federal gas tax increased. Others are floating the idea of tolls.

But the best starting point comes from Brian Richmond of the Kentucky Club for Growth: "Let's begin the dialogue about wasted tax dollars on completely useless earmarked projects before we ever start talking about raising another tax."

He also asks: "Why should working families in Kentucky be asked to pay for a bridge that benefits the entire eastern portion of the United States from Michigan to Miami?"

Why, indeed?

Neat You Tube on teaching reading

Here is a great little ten-minute explanation of why developing real reading proficiency requires more than just teaching reading strategies. Real reading comprehension also requires familiarity with all sorts of academic and cultural content.

If you have a child in school, be sure his or her teacher understands the very simple message in this great video.



Most importantly, don’t get fooled by some who seem to think that rich knowledge and cultural background isn’t that important for reading and writing success. The truth is, core knowledge counts.

Hat tip to the Education Trust, where folks know what is really needed for strong reading.

Latest education report not exactly a 'Thriller'

Why aren’t Kentucky’s African-American leaders as upset about too many black students falling behind in school as they are about a Louisville congressman leaving the House floor after the Congressional Black Caucus interrupted an important debate on the nation’s energy policy to call for a moment of silence for Michael Jackson?

Click here to read entire column.

Paying more to teachers with master’s degrees makes little sense

The Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington knows the fast way to stir up trouble. Their new report on teacher compensation is going to kick up a squawk with its comments that paying teachers more just because they have a master’s degree in education “makes little sense.”

The Center argues that the money spent on salary additions just because of advanced Ed school degrees isn’t well spent because having an education master’s degree bears, “no relation to student achievement.” The report says that while advanced degrees in math and science subjects, as opposed to education, do lead to higher student performance, about 90 percent of the master’s degrees held by teachers are in education programs, not core academic subjects.

One thing that jumps out of the statistics in the report is that few states have more at stake with this potential misapplication of school finances than Kentucky.

The Center’s report says an astonishing 71 percent of Kentucky’s teachers had a master’s degree as of the 2003-04 school year. Only two states, Connecticut and New York, had a higher rate. A majority of the states have rates less than 50 percent, and the US average rate is just 48 percent.

Thus, if paying more for a master’s degree is not cost effective, Kentucky stands to lose more than most states. We could be misdirecting a lot more money, proportionately, than almost every other state in the county.

The Center quotes each state’s price tag for this potential mistake. For Kentucky, it comes to a staggering $143,867,668, which ranks us 19th or so for high costs for non-productive degrees.

If our state’s leaders are really serious about education and getting our budget woes in order, then they need to take a look at the issues raised by the Center on Reinventing Public Education.

Parents’ school busing nightmare continues in Jefferson County

WAVE 3 Online reports “Parents say new student assignment plan leaves them nowhere to go.”

A 90 minute bus ride for a five-year old that also requires this young student to negotiate three bus transfers is just one horror story example.

If a parent did that on his or her own to a five year old, it would probably be considered child abuse. Young students often have enough trouble just finding their one correct bus at the end of a school day. Jefferson County expects this five-year old to correctly find three different buses in new and unfamiliar locations.

It’s no wonder that parent requests for transfers have mushroomed to well over 3,000, as reported in this video clip from WAVE 3 TV.

Could it be that Jefferson County is intentionally trying to force kids from wealthier homes out of public schools as a way to cut costs? If so, it looks like that plan is definitely working. But, if the idea is to meet the educational needs of students with a safe and caring school program, you have to score this idea with the lowest possible Kentucky school assessment score of “Novice – Non-Performance.”

If you have a Jefferson County student and are unhappy with the school assignment for your child, you can call the student assignment office at 485-6250. Maybe they'll listen. At least you will add your name to the ever growing list of parents who are unhappy with the fact they have "nowhere to go."

Uh-Oh! Hirsh pans draft of education standards Kentucky agreed to adopt

The highly regarded founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation, educator E. D. Hirsch, Jr., says he just got a copy of the draft of the new language arts education standards that Kentucky and 48 other states agreed to adopt.

The Core Knowledge Blog quotes Hirsch as saying, “At first glance, these language standards are, despite the brave descriptors, very similar to the dysfunctional state standards already in place.”

Here’s hoping someone slipped Hirsch a bogus document.

New report shows Kentucky-to-national White-Black gap growing

I wrote a few days ago about a new federal report that examines White to Black achievement gaps on the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). That blog and the referenced report show White to Black achievement gaps in Kentucky have grown since KERA began.

Now, I have taken the data in the report and done my own analysis – this time looking at White to White and Black to Black gaps between Kentucky and the national averages. Here is one of the more disturbing graphs from that study.


The gap between Kentucky’s White NAEP score and the national average score for all Whites is shown by the yellow bars. Notice that the gap way back in 1992 is equal to the gap in 2007 – in other words, we lag the nation just as badly as we did back in the beginning of KERA.

Things get ugly when we consider how our Blacks have performed, unfortunately. Our Blacks have gone from scoring eight points above the national Black average to scoring three points below it.

Once you realize that Blacks across the nation score 27 points below the national White average, you begin to understand how incredibly bad this is for Kentucky’s Black students.

KERA promised to solve our achievement gap problems. At this point, we have to realize that promise remains badly unfulfilled, if not actually broken.

For more on this serious situation, see the new freedomkentucky.org Wiki item on “Achievement Gaps for Kentucky Since KERA Began.”

U of L certainly needs to up graduation rates

– But doesn’t deserve special praise for saying it will do so

A recent report from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) says, “The University of Louisville in Kentucky is a very competitive public research university” (Page 18).

That’s because U of L attracts high caliber students who should enjoy significant success in college.

But, lots of undergraduate college success isn’t happening at U of L.

The AEI’s report says that only 44 percent of entering freshmen graduate from U of L within six years. AEI says this is one of the very worst rates among any of the comparable research universities in the South.

That's why I was a bit taken aback today to find that over at the Prichard Blog, Susan Weston is praising the University of Louisville for saying it will increase its college graduation rate.

There is no question that U of L needs to get its graduation house in order, but the university should already have a much better graduation rate than it does.

In fact, it is high time U of L made good on the investment Kentuckians and aspiring college freshmen have made in the school for a very long time.

Special Ed money not going where it’s needed

Over the past week and a half I posted several items about special education in Kentucky, including:

“Special education: for boys only?” and “Special education in Kentucky – Who pays?”

Now, let’s look at how the money doesn’t always go where it is needed.

The graph below was presented to the Kentucky legislature’s Interim Joint Committee on Education’s “road show meeting” at Midway College on July 13, 2009.


This graph shows the ratio of special education expenditures to the state and federal special education revenues the school districts in Kentucky received. Data for Fiscal Years 2003 to 2007 are included.

The graph does not show data for individual districts. Instead, the graph divides the districts into five separate groups, or quintiles, according to the assessed private property values in each district. Information for the group of districts with the lowest 20 percent of property wealth, the first quintile, is shown by the first set of bars on the left of the graph. The data for the state’s wealthiest districts, the fifth wealth quintile, are shown by the set of bars on the far right.

An important feature of the graph is the horizontal red line, marked as the “Expenditures = Revenues” line. If a ratio bar for a given year falls below the line, then the related group of districts received more money for special education students than they actually spend on special education services. On the other hand, districts that received inadequate funding from state and federal sources had to make up the difference in local tax dollars and the bar extends above the red “Expenditures = Revenues” line.

Several things are apparent in the graph. First of all, the costs of special education are growing everywhere. According to page 104 in the companion report to the slide presentation revenue for special education in Kentucky grew from $408 million in FY 2003 to $539 million by FY 2007, which is a 32 percent jump.

Perhaps even more important, the graph above makes it clear that the revenues are not being distributed properly. Poor wealth districts get more than they need while wealthy districts are being underfunded.

That creates unsatisfactory temptations. Once a district gets its special education funding from the state and the federal government, if the money isn’t all spent on special education services, there is no requirement to return the surplus. Thus, Kentucky’s poor wealth districts actually get a “profit center” effect from their special education programs, while special education students in the wealthy districts are an extra cost burden for local taxpayers.

Worse, money that should be fenced to support special education students winds up in the general fund of Kentucky’s poorest districts instead. As such, this money acts as a stimulus for the low wealth schools to label even more kids as disabled when the truth may be that these kids are just being badly served in regular classrooms.

It’s a bad system; one that excessively burdens taxpayers with a bait and switch ploy while tending to overload schools with kids who are identified as disabled. That, in turn tends to reduce the real assistance given to kids that really are learning disabled, which drags the entire process down.

Stimulus funds and charter schools

Kentucky officials want out of a requirement by US Education Secretary Arne Duncan that states must allow charter schools in order to get in line for stimulus funds being released this fall. Commentator Jim Waters reveals why in this latest edition of the Bluegrass Audio.

Click here to listen to the commentary.

How did we ever make it before nanny government?

The title of this entry is the same as that of a column written a few years ago by Walter Williams.

While the column is dated, the principles it espouses are timeless.

A worthy exercise would be to read Williams' column in light of all the attempts by today's health nannies to protect us from ourselves through policies that trample on individual liberties and private-property rights. Examples that come to mind: government-imposed smoking bans and the banning of the use of trans fats by restaurants.

Williams clears the air on this issue when he writes: "In a free society, government has the responsibility of protecting us from others, but not from ourselves."

KLC smells like KFC: the original recipe for government payola

Government can pickpocket the taxpayer to pay for lavish hotel rooms and high-priced escorts at night and then undercut the private-sector insurance rates during the day.

Click here to read entire column.

What education is needed to get a job?

Strive Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky just blogged on jobs research from the University of Cincinnati. The blog covers the region that includes Northern Kentucky. The research looked at the level of education required to get various kinds of jobs versus the percentage of the population that has the required education. Here is how that Strive analysis looks:

Source: Strive Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky

Note that nearly half the jobs in the region require at least a bachelor’s degree but less than one in five people have that level of education.

The region, which includes some of Kentucky’s most upscale communities, is also behind the education requirement even for less demanding jobs that only need some level of postsecondary training such as an associate’s degree.

Experience alone isn’t good enough to land a job, either. The region has more than enough workers for the kinds of jobs that require experience or some sort of long-term training.

For the rest of the population which is only qualified for jobs that take little training, it’s a buyer’s market. Available workers in this lowest education category outnumber the jobs by a factor of almost two to one.

Holliday selected as new Kentucky Commissioner of Education

The Kentucky Department of Education announces that, “Terry Holliday, superintendent of the Iredell-Statesville school district in Statesville, North Carolina, has been selected as Kentucky’s fifth commissioner of education.”

Holliday brings some impressive accomplishments to the job. Under his tenure, his district won the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. These awards recognize companies, organizations, businesses and other entities that have shown long-term improvement in quality and productivity.

To earn that award – and many other accolades – Holliday closed achievement gaps and spurred marked improvement in graduation rates (both of which are badly needed in Kentucky!) and other student achievement measures.

I talked about Holliday with a newspaper staffer who serves the Iredell-Statesville school district area in North Carolina about a week ago. About the only complaints against Holliday seem to be from some teachers who claim Holliday made them work harder. This newspaper man will be sorry to see him leave.

Holliday brings some great skills to his new job.

As a North Carolina educator, he is intimately familiar with value added assessment programs. That is what we needed, but never got, from our now disbanded CATS assessments. As we rework CATS, Holliday’s background could be of inestimable value to that process.

As a data-oriented individual who even impressed the data hounds at Baldridge, Holliday understands issues we have pushed at the Bluegrass Institute for years.

This time, our Kentucky Board of Education might just have got it right. We look forward to meeting Dr. Holliday and watching what he can do for Kentucky.

New Mexico examines merit pay for teachers

New Mexico isn’t a haven for good public education. Recently, an Education Week study gave the state one of the lowest grades for its public school students’ chance for success.

But, New Mexico legislators know it, and they are not sitting on their heels.

Now, the New Mexico Independent outlines what that state’s legislators are saying about merit pay for teachers.

A big stimulus for this is a recent New Mexico legislature Legislative Finance Committee (LFC) report on teacher pay.

Teachers in that state are paid on a three-tier licensure level system similar to what we have in Kentucky.

The LFC used New Mexico’s rich longitudinal assessment information (which produces high quality individual student data that our now defunct CATS system never provided). The LFC report found that, “There are effective and ineffective teachers at each licensure level despite the pay being similar at each licensure level. The differences in teacher effectiveness between licensure levels were not substantial, but the differences in teacher effectiveness within each licensure level were immense. There is wide variation in terms of teacher effectiveness within a licensure level.”

Simply put, just paying teachers more based on longevity or having an advanced degree does not produce better student learning. The normal private sector motivation of better pay for higher caliber work doesn’t apply to tier-based teacher pay systems.

So, New Mexico is looking at doing something different – paying teachers based on their actual performance with students. And, while some questions remain, because New Mexico had the high quality student assessment data necessary to do the research, they are on a solid track to do something better for their kids.

Meanwhile, here in Kentucky, we never got such useful data from CATS, and we stay mired in the same sort of tiered pay system that New Mexico’s research shows does not work well for kids. While New Mexicans move forward with good data to guide them, thanks to our closed-minded education bureaucracy, we currently have none.

Coulson on ending the public education monopoly

Here’s a thoughtful editorial from Investors Business Daily that needs a real conversation in Kentucky.

Watch out - more 'emergency' legislation threatened

“Emergency” legislation is hundreds of pages long, and often is not read by our representatives. As a result, the impact on Kentuckians of such legislation – including the current health-care proposal floated in the US House of Representatives – is left unconsidered.

For example, the health-care proposal includes a surtax of 5.4 percent, which the nonpartisan Tax Foundation projects will raise Kentucky’s combined tax rate to more than 53 percent in 2011 and tax ranking nationwide to No. 19.

Ironically, the plan will put more tax burden on small businesses that legislators are counting on to start hiring workers again.

Let's hope our Washington representatives will read and analyze this 1,018-page plan before they sock it to us again. Increasing Kentucky tax burden more will drive business out of - or away from - the commonwealth.

Paper revises article on federal report

I posted several blog items on a new federal report here and here that examine the achievement gaps between Blacks and Whites in Kentucky and other states. The federal report shows that those gaps in Kentucky remain a significant problem almost two decades after the passage of KERA. In fact, the eighth grade math Black/White gap here has very dramatically increased since KERA’s enactment in 1990.

However, the real messages in the federal report can be confusing. Yesterday morning, the Lexington Herald-Leader ran an article about the report titled “Ky., South successful in closing racial gap.” The opening paragraph said, “Southern states are closing the gap between how black and white students perform on tests – and Kentucky is no exception.”

That certainly wasn’t correct, because, as the graphs here clearly show, Kentucky has not closed the racial gap in either fourth or eighth grade math or in fourth grade reading (federal testing on eighth grade reading didn’t start until well after KERA was enacted).

So, I called the Herald-Leader to see if they would review the report with me and update their story. The reporter who wrote the original story wasn’t available, but senior newsman John Stamper came on the line and we went through the report together.

By mid-afternoon, the story was updated. It had a more accurate title, and some of my comments were added to point out that a smaller gap does not show our schools are doing a good job since that smaller gap only exists because our White kids also score very low.

So, a “Hats Off” to John Stamper at the Herald-Leader for taking time out of his busy day to listen and follow through to insure the people of Kentucky got a more accurate description of the new federal report. Achievement gaps continue to be one of the major problems with KERA, and effective answers continue to elude our educators. The public deserves to know that.

Senate loses Republican, gambling opponent

Gov. Beshear is using the appointment process to try and wrestle the Kentucky Senate away from Republicans.

Sen. Charlie Borders, who spent 18 years in the Kentucky Senate, has been offered a choice spot on the state's Public Service Commission. Borders predecessor, John W. Clay, made more than $117,000 as a commissioner.

A special election will be held to determine Borders' replacement. Look for Rep. Robin Webb, D-Grayson, to fare well in the Aug. 25 special election. Democrats outnumber Republicans in the district by a 59.6 percent to 35.2 percent margin.

Read more here

Special education: for boys only?

I’ve been writing over the past few days about a report on Kentucky’s special education programs that was given to the legislature’s Interim Joint Committee on Education on Monday. Until now, my comments have focused on data slides directly discussed in the meeting. However, as I read through the companion report I was absolutely awestruck by a huge imbalance in the different rates of special education enrollment for boys versus girls. Whether we are talking about mental retardation (MR), speech language problems (S/L), emotional behavioral disorders (EBD), other health impairment (OHI), specific learning disability (SLD), multiple disabilities (MD), or development delay (DD) doesn’t matter. As this table, which is an extract from Table 2.4 in the report shows, boys greatly outnumber girls in special education enrollment.


For example, among all students identified as having mental retardation (MR) in Kentucky, 58.5 percent are boys and only 41.5 percent are girls. In most of the disability categories, males are more than twice as likely to be identified as females. For autism, the rate of identification is more than 5.5 times higher for males – a way out of balance situation.

Can it really be that boys face so many more education challenges? Are we grossly under-identifying girls? Is our education system hostile to boys? What’s going on here? Someone better start asking some serious questions.

Governor rode a dead horse

Gov. Steve Beshear refuses to consider Senate President David Williams' plan to help Kentucky's horse-racing industry address its most-challenging obstacles. As a result, the governor's plan to add racinos at Kentucky's horse-racing tracks failed to win enough support during a special legislative session and the commonwealth's signature industry remains in danger of falling behind.

Click here to listen to this commentary.

New federal report shows Kentucky Black to White Education Gaps mostly increasing!

The US Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences released a new report today on “Achievement Gaps, How Black and White Students in Public Schools Perform in Mathematics and Reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Statistical Analysis Report.”

I pulled a couple of graphs from the report to give you a better idea than ever before about what has really been going on since KERA started in Kentucky in the early 1990s. For most of you, this is going to be a disturbing shock.

The first graph shows the Black/White achievement gap for fourth grade National Assessment of Education (NAEP) math in Kentucky actually grew somewhat between 1992 and 2007.

This graph, copied directly from the gap report, also includes a dashed red line that shows the overall average math score for all students across the country of all races. Our White kids barely matched that average even though the national samples have a lot more children of color than we do in our NAEP samples. Children of color score lower on the NAEP, so having a much larger proportion of them in the national sample drags the national average down.

When we do an “apples to apples” comparison, across the nation Whites scored 248 - 10 points higher than Kentucky Whites did on this assessment in 2007. That is a big score difference on the NAEP.


The next graph shows things are even worse for our eighth grade Black students. The gap between their score and the score for Kentucky’s eighth grade Whites grew dramatically between 1990 and 2007. Our Whites scored eight points lower than Whites across the nation on the 2007 eighth grade math assessment, by the way.

That means our relatively low gap compared to other states is misleading – our Whites didn’t set anything like a decent target for our Blacks to shoot for.


The last graph shows how the fourth grade reading gap has trended since the early days of KERA. As with the other examples, the gap grew somewhat over time (eighth grade NAEP reading wasn’t tested at the state level until well after KERA began and therefore isn’t shown).


There is another “zinger” in the federal gap report. We have been told time and again that our NAEP reading scores are around, or even slightly above, the national average. Now, the new facts in the gap report show the national White fourth grade reading score was 230, five points above what our Whites scored.

How can that be? What’s going on?

The answer is to look at the demographic information in Kentucky’s NAEP samples.

For example, the last figure above shows that in 2007 our NAEP sample for fourth grade reading was 84 percent White and 11 percent Black. The remaining part of the sample, just 5 percent, was composed of other racial groups. Not shown here, but if you look at the gap report, you will find that the comparable national fourth grade reading sample was only 56 percent White and 17 percent Black, with other, generally low scoring minority groups like Hispanics, making up the balance of the sample.

Simply put, the national and Kentucky samples averaged across all students are not really comparable. Few outside the Bluegrass Institute have pointed this out in the past.

Anyway, demographics explain why the data we see in this new gap report paint such an alarmingly different picture from what you have been told by others before. Finally, in this new gap report, we are starting to get some apples to apples numbers, and they substantiate what we at the Bluegrass Institute have been saying for some time. When properly considered, the NAEP data shows Kentucky has some very severe education issues that have not been adequately addressed by KERA, and which too often have not been properly presented to the public in proper context.

And, as I pointed out in the earlier blog on this report, even the acting commissioner of education statistics is starting to note that Kentucky’s lower gap numbers don’t indicate better performance.

New federal report shows even Mississippi beat us for fourth grade math scores!

The US Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences released a new report today on “Achievement Gaps, How Black and White Students in Public Schools Perform in Mathematics and Reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Statistical Analysis Report.”

The findings are bound to raise eyebrows here.


Among the most shocking revelations: while some people have told us – again and again – about how our kids are doing pretty well on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the new report shows that in fourth grade math our White kids were even outscored by ----- Whites in MISSISSIPPI! Mississippi Whites also tied our Whites for eighth grade reading.

They are starting to catch us.

By the way, the report mentioned that our Black to White score gap on this NAEP assessment is lower than most other states. However, the table above makes it clear that this is only the case because our White kids perform so poorly.

In fact, when Stuart Kerachsky, Acting Commissioner, National Center for Education Statistics, discussed the gap report today, he used Kentucky as a specific example that a low gap does not necessarily indicate good performance.

Commissioner Kerachsky knows what some in Kentucky apparently don’t – when Whites set a very low target for Blacks to shoot at, no one wins.

Hear Jim Waters' stirring speech to Louisville on July 4th

Here are some You Tubes worth a look. Be sure to stay around for Part 2 where Jim Waters tells how you can get involved.

This is Part 1



And, here is Part 2

Special education in Kentucky – Who pays?

There was a big surprise in today’s meeting of the legislature’s Interim Joint Committee on Education at Midway College.

We’ve heard plenty about how the federal government pays lots of money to support services for public school students who need special education. We also know the federal government has passed complex and expensive mandates on what those special education services must include. And, Kentucky is a poor state. So, a lot of you probably think the feds put up most of the special education money – well, guess again.

At today’s meeting the Kentucky Office of Education Accountability (OEA) reported that Kentuckians pay the lion’s share of the state’s special education costs with their state and local taxes – about 74 percent of the total costs, in fact. The graph below tells the tale.


[Graph source: “Review of Kentucky Special Education,” a handout from the Kentucky Office of Education Accountability, July 13, 2009. I added the color annotations after discussing the federal versus state/local dollar sources with the lead OEA briefer, Deborah Nelson.]

Given the total special education price tag of $539,366,526, we are talking about some serious money here. Based on the percentages in the figure, Kentucky residents put up almost $400 million of that in state and local taxes (which does not count the part of our taxes sent to Washington that come back in the federal contribution shown above).

So, if you think we are educating these kids at some out-of-state folks’ expense, forget it. It’s largely your dime.

Now, here’s what really makes this serious.

The OEA briefing provided evidence that our schools may be over-identifying kids needing these special services. That really riveted legislator attention.

I checked a few numbers after the meeting and found that the Kentucky Department of Education reported there were 109,354 students in special education as of December 2006. Thus, the average cost per child in special education in the state is around $4,932.

If we can cut our special education population by just one percent, the annual savings would be well over $5 million.

Actually, the OEA presented other information in the meeting that indicates we might be over-identifying students at more than a one percent rate. In fact, our current funding formulas might be encouraging schools to over-identify special education students.

More on this later, so stay tuned!

Is Anyone Minding the Store at the Federal Reserve?

Here’s a You Tube that makes it clear the Federal Reserve badly needs an audit.

The commentary indicates the Fed issue could impact every man, woman and child in the US to the tune of $30,000 each!

Newspaper: Jefferson County School Board flunking “Transparency 101” -- Addendum

Reference my earlier post on Jefferson County’s performance on CATS and NCLB, I know someone will raise the poverty question (always happens in Kentucky).

The poverty rate in Jefferson County Public Schools, based on the percent of students eligible for the federal free and reduced cost lunch program, per the “Kentucky Department of Education - Free/Reduced Price Approvals - October 2008” Excel file [marked as “FY 2009 Qualifying Data (Source - Oct 2008) .xls” here] is 60 percent.

Statewide, the rate is nearly equal at 54 percent.

So, the poverty excuse does not work for Jefferson County compared to Kentucky-wide averages.

Newspaper: Jefferson County School Board flunking “Transparency 101” -- Continued

I wrote yesterday about the Jefferson County School system evaluating their superintendent behind closed doors.

I wondered why the board might want to do the evaluation in secret since, per the Courier-Journal, “Berman…thought his evaluation was positive.”

So, I did a little digging this morning on the district’s performance on CATS and No Child Left Behind. The graph summarizes what I found.


The 2007-08 Growth Factor Ethnic Membership Excel spreadsheet from the Kentucky Department of Education shows there were 648,628 students in Kentucky’s public schools in that school year and 93,941 of them – 14.5 percent – were in Jefferson County.

However, my analysis of the department’s 2008 NCLB Media Report shows 22 of the 34 schools in the lowest performance category, Tier 5, were found in Jefferson County. That’s 64.7 percent of all the Tier 5 schools (note that one school listed as Tier 5 in this report was actually Tier 4 per the KDE).

In CATS, the relevant Excel Spreadsheet titled “District Datafiles for importing into Databases or Spreadsheet Applications” shows 10 of the state’s 26 schools – 38.5 percent – that scored in the lowest performance category of “Assistance” were in Jefferson County. Among the very lowest CATS performers, those in “Assistance Level 3,” Jefferson County had a whopping 75.0 percent share.

But, Superintendent Berman felt his review from the Jefferson County School Board was positive. Since we have no clue what the board even looked at, and since so far no board member has challenged Dr. Berman’s opinion, I am left wondering exactly what they looked at and what they were thinking.

What a difference a (school-choice) governor can make

After the Arizona Supreme Court ruled in March that a voucher program allowing 473 foster and special-needs children to attended private school – some for two years – was unconstitutional, Gov. Jan Brewer said she was “heartbroken.”

Unlike her predecessor, former Gov. Janet Napolitano, who opposed the voucher program, Brewer called a special session in May so that a bill creating tax credits credits could be passed immediately and monies available to parents at the beginning of the 2009-10 school year.

A strong Blaine amendment affected the legal standing of vouchers but not tax credits in Arizona. Kentucky also has a restrictive Blaine amendment. Arizona’s new tax-credit law will accomplish the same thing the vouchers were, and greatly reduces – based on past court rulings – the chance that school-choice opponents could succeed in stopping alternative for children.

Perhaps this gives clues to how Kentucky should proceed with a policy to provide a private education to our state’s neediest children.

Gov. Brewer’s courage in Arizona also offers hints to Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear about the impact gubernatorial leadership can have in improving the education of special-needs and foster children.

Forget the fun – kids have to be pushed to learn what’s important

It’s really not a news flash – except to thousands of Kentucky educators – but a researcher in psychological sciences at the University of Missouri just issued findings that,

"Schools need to push children to learn things that they do not do naturally."

Dr. David Geary, Curators' Professor of Psychological Sciences in the MU College of Arts and Science went on to say,

"Learning is not always going to be fun and children should not expect it to be. Attempting to engage children by making activities fun, causes those activities to become more similar to what students are already doing naturally and can limit new learning."

A University of Missouri news release about Dr. Geary’s report goes on to say,

“Geary found that one reason U.S. students may be behind students in other countries in subjects like science and math is because American schools have moved away from traditional practices where students learn information through repetition. Instead, U.S. schools often use more group and social interactions to teach topics that can be challenging.

‘From an evolutionary perspective, what we are designed to do and what culture says we now have to do, is very different,’ Geary said. ‘We should not expect what comes naturally to us to be the best way to learn something new.’”

In other words, learning involves hard, sometimes toilsome work like practice and repetition.

Geary is certainly a man worth listening to. His bio indicates he has special expertise in the area of teaching math to students, something that Kentucky has struggled with mightily for years. In fact, Dr. Geary was one of the select scholars on the President’s National Mathematics Advisory Panel.

Anyway, Geary teaches a lesson far too many of our educators are flunking as they struggle with feel good approaches to education that simply won’t get the job done. As we work towards setting new education standards and a new assessment program, Dr. Geary seems to be running a class that our teachers badly need to attend.

Don't let the party end after tea is served

Columnist Jim Waters urges patriots not to retreat after storming downtown squares and the Capitol steps during recent tea parties.

Click here to read entire column.

Newspaper: Jefferson County School Board flunking “Transparency 101”

Yesterday’s Courier-Journal reports on the continuing confrontation concerning the recent closed door evaluation of Jefferson County Schools superintendent Shelly Berman.

The school board says it did nothing wrong and an existing Kentucky Attorney General opinion does not apply. However, the newspaper isn’t buying it and says it will appeal to the Attorney General’s office.

According to the Courier-Journal, other school districts have also ignored an October 2008 Attorney General ruling that the process of superintendent evaluation must be open to the public.

Thus, the Jefferson County folks may have company in the transparency “dunce cap” corner, unless the Attorney General backs down from its previous ruling in favor of the public’s right to know.

Paul Harvey's message

Here's the radio commentary based on Jim Waters' recent column about the late long-time commentator Paul Harvey.

In Ohio long-time failing schools under NCLB get staff overhauls

– It doesn’t happen in Kentucky

Up in Ohio, they take No Child Left Behind seriously. When schools chronically fail to make adequate yearly progress over an extended period of time, the Kentucky Enquirer indicates that the teachers must apply and interview as though they are new hires to keep their jobs.

While the Enquirer article seems to be upset that only about one in four teachers in Cincinnati’s poorest NCLB schools kept their jobs, that would be a miracle in Kentucky. Down here, I don’t think the staff at any school has seen much, if any, replacement due to NCLB. I certainly have not heard of a school in Kentucky where three out of four teachers got walking papers as a result of NCLB.

It’s about kids, not geography

The commonwealth has serious problems with its public education system. Yet the entrenched establishment apparently is more concerned about the fact that no Kentuckians are among the four finalists for state education commissioner.

It’s understandable that Wilson Sears, executive director of the Kentucky Association of School Superintendents, would feel the pressure to lash out. After all, his constituents are school superintendents, and one of them wasn’t chosen as a finalist.

Sears claims “… no one from outside the state could better serve our children than a Kentucky superintendent.”

It’s one thing to claim the candidates aren’t as strong as they should be, as the Prichard Committee’s Cindy Heine does. It’s quite another to say that just because none of the candidates are from Kentucky, they couldn’t be an effective commissioner.

Considering our dismal education record in recent years, not being from Kentucky may be the best thing these candidates have going for them.

A tale of some Kentucky schools

Thanks to some extensive data collecting by Strive Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky (See the “2009 Striving Together: Report Card”), I just got a chance to compare some performance measures such as high school graduation rates and ACT scores for Kentucky Catholic Schools to those of nearby public schools.


In Northern Kentucky, Catholic Schools offer the major school choice option for those who can afford it. It’s clear in the graph above why many parents take this school choice option, but there are some additional surprises, as well.

First, note that the Covington Diocese, which covers Northern Kentucky, runs away with the best-by-far Freshman Graduation Rate. This rate is the ratio of graduates in the 2007-08 school year (counts obtained from the Graduation Rate Excel spreadsheet here)to the number of freshmen who entered each school system as ninth graders in the 2004-05 term (which can be found in the Excel 2004-05 “Growth Factor Ethnic Membership” spreadsheet here).

Keep in mind that this rate tends to return figures a couple of points below the true graduation rate because of a lot of kids who are held back in the ninth grade, but federal research indicates that this approximation calculation is still among the most accurate available.

The Catholic system also outperforms on the ACT college entrance test.

The graph also shows the percentage of disadvantaged kids in each system, which is derived from the percentage of kids who are eligible for the federal free and reduced cost lunch program. Clearly, most of the Catholic students are well-to-do compared to the public school memberships.

However, here is the first surprise. The Ludlow Independent schools have a much higher school lunch rate than either the Kenton County or Campbell County school systems, but Ludlow does a much better job of graduating its students.

Also, note that Ludlow’s ACT college entrance test Composite Score is quite competitive with other public school systems, as well. Clearly, Ludlow is a district worth watching. Also, as Ludlow borders Covington, it could even be a system of choice for parents of modest means who have the ability to move to this relatively low housing cost area.

In any event, it is clear that while the Covington and Newport Independent school districts face strong poverty issues, that they have a long way to go in educating their students successfully. Graduation rates and ACT scores in both systems are way below what they need to be.

One more note on transparency of data. Covington and Newport both provided a “graduation rate” to the Strive folks. These are based on the “official” calculation used by the Kentucky Department of Education. Covington reported a graduation rate of 90 percent, and Newport claimed a rate of 81 percent.

Notice the sharp contrast to the graduation rates in the graph above. While federally research indicates the rates shown in the graph above are probably a bit low (though they are calculated in the same way the Catholic system uses, so the comparison is fair), there is no reasonable way that the rates in the graph can be so far off from the rates Covington and Newport provided to Strive.

In fact, when the data underlying these rates from Covington were audited in 2006, the finding was that the data was grossly under-reporting the true seriousness of the situation.

For example, Covington had twice as many dropouts as they owned up to, and Newport had five times as many. Because dropouts are used to calculate the Kentucky Department of Education’s untrustworthy graduation rates, the result was that graduation rates for both school systems were grossly overstated by the “official” numbers.

Yet, the deception continues three years later. These bogus numbers even showed up in the new Strive report, though Strive warns not to try to compare them to the graduation rate for the Catholic system.

It’s back: Taxation without representation!

The first tea party to protest taxation without representation occurred on Dec. 16, 1773. We’ve come full circle and are now almost back where we started.

We are positioned to do to ourselves what no other nation could have done to us militarily or otherwise.

Congress recently passed a $1.2 trillion bill that members didn’t even have time to read. On June 26, the House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. This bill contained 1,200 pages before another 300 pages were added at 3 a.m. the day of the vote. Representatives did not have time to read, analyze, debate and understand the future ramifications of this legislation before being forced to vote.

In the real world, this type of behavior is called “unconscionable, irresponsible and negligent.”

What if a private company acted in this manner and employees cried that the company was taking money out of their paychecks for things they didn’t want? And what if that company's leaders had the power to exempt themselves from any consequences and set themselves up for a worry-free life?

Ridiculous? No. Our elected representatives are in the process of setting up this company as our government, and we are the suckers that will be paying the bills. You won’t see any initiative by our elected representatives to quickly move for live media coverage for an untold number of hearings to decry their despicable representation for us. What a shame!

In 20-20 hindsight, nothing is so much of an emergency that Congress cannot take time to read bills, analyze their impact – both now and in the future – and debate from an informed, transparent position. But there is a reason these bills have not been transparent and debated from fact: the political fat cats in Washington know that Americans would not put up with their nonsense.

The Washington legislative approach will have significant ramifications on every Kentuckian. It will negatively impact our commonwealth, its city and county governments and employers.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we all knew those ramifications and had elected officials in Frankfort and Washington communicating with us and looking out for our interests – not theirs?

Their approach may be great politics, but it's bad policy administered with no integrity. It’s time to draw the line in the sand and demand true policy transparency, analysis and debate through responsible representation.

League of Ordinary Bureaucrats

It’s understandable that there might not be a lot of enthusiasm for the public to know that organizations supported partially by taxpayer dollars have garnered the attention of state Auditor Crit Luallen for their “excessive spending” and “inadequate oversight.”

And no … we’re not talking about Congress or the Kentucky General Assembly.

Rather, we’re referring to the top five officials in the Kentucky Association of Counties spending “nearly $600,000 in two years on travel, meals and other expenses.”

Then there’s the matter of Kentucky League of Cities Executive Director Sylvia Lovely’s $315,000 compensation package. It’s very taxpayer-friendly like of Lovely to decide “she would discontinue several corporate perks, including … holding League functions at a restaurant co-owned her husband.

I wonder if she will also now reverse the league’s recent decision to stop complying with reporters’ open-records’ requests. Even if she does, it will be with all the enthusiasm of a vegetarian at an Independence Day hog roast.

Tennessee getting more charter schools

– Kentucky still has none

Perhaps partly in a reaction to strong pressure from Washington, Tennessee will significantly increase its number of charter schools.

First priority to enter them will go to Tennessee’s most disadvantaged kids and those in failing schools or with failing grades.

Meanwhile, here in Kentucky our parents get no choices like that when their child is poor and in a school system that doesn’t meet that child’s needs.

Can’t set high education standards by shooting at your feet

The report caught my attention right away. A few days ago the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) released a new report, “Keeping Middle Grades Students on the Path to Success in High School.” The new report discusses the proper place to set state test standards, a subject that I have discussed for Kentucky in a number of articles and papers such as here and here.

SREB uses results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress as a guide to measure the rigor in southern area states’ school assessments. Some of my analyses have done the same.

There’s only one problem – the SREB findings don’t square with what we know in Kentucky.

Back in March, we threw out our CATS assessments for cause. After considering lots of evidence, our legislators told the Kentucky Department of Education to review and update all of our education standards and then revise our tests. The legislature directed this because it was obvious the CATS tests were not properly aimed. For example, this graph from the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education shows 45 percent of recent high school graduates in Kentucky need at least one remedial course upon college entry. Clearly, we are not producing the caliber of high school graduates we need.


We know our kids score low on high quality tests like the new EXPLORE and PLAN tests from the ACT, Inc. We know our kids need tons of remediation once they enter college.

We know that our schools and students have to strive a lot harder.

But, never mind what we know. Table 8 in the new SREB report declares our now defunct CATS standards and the feel good scores they produced – at least in eighth grade – were, “set about RIGHT.”

Go figure!

I sent some of my research to the SREB folks, and I hope they take a careful look at the material. Kentucky’s experience shows SREB is shooting too low with their appraisals of state standards. Hopefully, I can help them recalibrate their sights.