State workers offer their own cost-cutting ideas

– Taxpayers await response, action

Gov. Steve Beshear asked state employees for suggestions on how to cut costs. And boy did they!

Given the state’s fiscal condition, Beshear should not waste any time acting on many of these suggestions offered by public servants who must daily balance their own budgets and make tough decisions to make ends meet.

These folks often don’t have the power to execute their recommended changes to cut wasteful spending, eliminate inefficient policies and employ innovative practices. However, their managers do.

But how many of state government’s “middle managers” daily ignore many of the cost-cutting opportunities included in these recommendations? Could it be that it’s not their money they waste?

FreedomKentucky.org has a sortable database on the first 1,200 employees suggestions presented to Beshear.

Enter keyword searches for words like ”lights,” “Fletcher,” “training,” or “state vehicles” to immediately see a wealth of information on opportunities to cut costs and improve the effectiveness of hard-earned taxpayer dollars extracted annually by state government.

No longer will there be silence when big-spending politicians say: “Show us where to cut costs and make improvements.”

Their own employees have told them “how.” The only uncertainty now remains “when” Frankfort will respond, and “what” that response will be.

Clearing the smoke about smoking bans

Bluegrass Institute columnist Jim Waters will make the case for allowing restaurant owners, employees and customers to make decisions concerning smoking bans, free of government interference.

Click here to read the entire article.

BIPPS defends liberty on Kentucky Tonight

(LEXINGTON, Ky.) – Should government force restaurant and bar owners to ban smoking in their privately owned establishments? Should Frankfort’s politicians be allowed to trample on local communities’ smoking policies? Should constitutional principles be surrendered to satisfy the insatiable appetite of health nannies for more government control of our lives?

These questions will be debated tonight on KET’s “Kentucky Tonight,” hosted by Bill Goodman, at 8 p.m. (EDT).

Bluegrass Institute columnist Jim Waters will make the case for allowing restaurant owners, employees and customers to make their own decisions concerning smoking bans, free of government interference.

“While we are concerned about the unhealthy effects of smoking, we believe it’s critical to counter the assault on private-property rights by some in government and academia occurring under the guise of improving Kentuckians’ health,” Waters said. “Decisions about smoking and whether to allow the practice on one’s private property – whether that be a restaurant, bar or home – are best left to individuals, not Frankfort.”

Notable increase in Advanced Placement Tests came from 12 “Advance Kentucky” schools

– Merit pay works – in Kentucky!

I wrote yesterday about the very nice increase in Kentucky’s Advance Placement Test (AP) performance that was announced a few days ago. In this post, I discuss a dramatic contribution to that increase that came from just 12 of the 230 or so high schools in the state – those few schools that participated in the first phase of the “Advance Kentucky” program to improve AP performance.

The 12 Advance Kentucky high schools are: Anderson County, Barren County, Corbin Independent, Henderson County, Lone Oak, Marion County, North Laurel, Reidland, Scott County, Shelby County, South Laurel, and Warren East.

According to Advance Kentucky’s press release on the 2009 results, students in those high schools made extraordinary improvement. The 12 schools increased their numbers of AP tests in the key areas of math, science and English getting a score of 3 or more by 76.6 percent while across Kentucky there was only a much lower 17.5 percent improvement.

An AP score of 3 is usually the minimum “Qualifying Score” for a student to get college credit for the course.

In fact, fully one-third of all of the math, science and English AP increases in tests receiving qualifying scores came from just the 12 Advance Kentucky high schools.

Advance Kentucky’s press release says that females in the pilot project contributed fully one-half of the entire increase in female AP qualifying scores across the entire state.

Low income students in the 12 pilot schools increased their AP course qualifying score rates in math, science and English AP testing by 148 percent and supplied nearly half of all the increase across Kentucky for similar income level students.

How did they do it?

Advance Kentucky was developed by the Kentucky Science & Technology Corporation in partnership with the National Math & Science Initiative, or NMSI. The model involves a number of coordinated actions as shown in this NMSI “pie,” but I want to mention some key ones.


Notice that there are stipends and bonuses for educators and incentives for students, as well.

Kentucky teachers of the pilot schools’ AP courses received a stipend of $100 for every qualifying score their AP students achieved. This is a teacher merit pay example – right here in Kentucky – that paid big dividends to the students involved.

In addition, the student who scored a 3 or more also received a $100 award. Plus, those students will save the considerable tuition costs for the college courses that they successfully completed while still in high school.

So, overall, the financial inducements in the Advance Kentucky program seem to have helped get everyone’s nose to the grindstone on the other items in the “pie,” which are all important.

There is one somewhat cautionary note to the good news. Minorities in the 12 schools improved their AP “pass rate” by a whopping 225 percent compared to a far more modest 31 percent rise across Kentucky (including the huge contribution from the pilot schools). However, when I checked the minority 12th grade enrollment in the 12 pilots (see table below), I found that Kentucky’s dominant minority group, the African-Americans, were notably under-represented.


Overall, the average enrollment percentage for Blacks in the Advance Kentucky schools was only 5.7 percent, little more than half the state-wide high school average of 10.0 percent, which I calculated from the listing of all schools in the state from the "FY 2009 Qualifying Data (Source - Oct 2008).xls" file availabe here.

That raises a question. Our African-American population is heavily concentrated in Louisville. Why isn’t a single Jefferson County high school in this first set of high schools or even in the additional group of 15 more high schools that will be in the “Cohort 2” phase of the project? It seems like the pilot badly needs representation from Kentucky’s largest school district.

Meanwhile, you can learn more about the Advance Kentucky program at www.advancekentucky.com. If your high school isn’t in the program, it should be.

And, “hats off” to the Advance Kentucky crowd, headed by Ms. Joanne Lang, who are making this great idea work for Kentucky students.

(minor edit added 30Aug09)

Chandler avoids town halls, tough questions

When it comes to answering tough questions in the public sphere, Kentucky taxpayers simply want to know: Where’s Ben?

Click here to read the entire column.

Burdensome Ohio student-safety law repealed

The Kentucky Enquirer reports that a law aimed at increasing safety for students in public schools, “grew into a wide-ranging, omnibus law of too many costly regulations that strayed far from the original intent of protecting school children from obvious dangers.” As a consequence, the Ohio legislature, in a rather remarkable action, repealed legislation known as “Jarod’s Law.”

Impacts of this specific law – which was enacted in an emotional reaction to a child’s accidental death – were, according to Ohio State Rep. Randy Gardner of Bowling Green, “more costly and more regulation” than legislators intended.

Make no mistake – we need realistic and effective rules for public safety. But, those rules need to be carefully crafted to avoid serious unintended consequences. Apparently, in a remarkable all all to rare case of self-appraisal, the Ohio legislature realized that in the case of Jarod’s Law, they had simply gone too far.

Good News in high school Advanced Placement Test Scores

A couple of days ago, the Kentucky Department of Education released new public school Advanced Placement Test (AP) data for 2009 along with a notable amount of older data from earlier years.

The table below, which comes directly from the department’s news release, shows that the number of students who got a college credit level AP score (a 3, 4 or 5) rose for all reported ethnic categories. That is certainly good news at a time when the state needs more college-educated citizens to meet the demands of the new economy.


This good news comes after a number of concerted efforts over most of the last decade to increase the quality of AP courses and the number of students taking and passing them successfully.

The department’s news release lists a number of the efforts to improve our AP programs but failed to mention the latest, and perhaps most important of all. That was legislation in Senate Bill 2 from the 2008 Regular session.

Senate Bill 2 created a number of new programs to enrich teacher preparation for AP instructor duties and for the first time adds KEES college scholarship award “kickers” for students who qualify for the federal school lunch program – an indicator of low income – who get a 3 or higher. The students covered by the new 2009 AP data were the first ones eligible for the KEES AP boosts, and I see some indication in the results that the plan is working.

This next table might make that a bit clearer. This slide shows the percentage change in the number of students scoring a 3 or more on the AP by racial group. For example, the top left figure shows that in 2001 the proportion of African-Americans getting a 3 or more on the AP rose by 2.4 percent.

Notice in the table I shaded declines in the percentages from the previous year in red. One of the first things that jumps out at me is that in 2009, for the first time since 2005, no ethnic group had a decline in the percentage of students scoring 3’s and above.


The next notable thing is that in 2009 every single group posted at least a double-digit percentage increase in AP successes. In previous years, at least one group had only either single digit positive increases or a decline.

Finally, looking at the bottom line, which summarizes the trends for all students averaged together, the change in the percentage getting a 3 or higher between 2008 and 2009, 19.8 percent, is the largest ever.

So, it looks like the overall effort to increase Kentucky’s AP performance is having a positive effect.

I’ll have some more interesting news on the AP situation tomorrow, so stay tuned.

The economy and health care reform

Good news about the economy could provide an insurmountable obstacle for a government-run health care system.

Click here to read the entire article

Summoning leaders: Walk, then talk

It’s often easier to talk about problems than take tough steps to fix them.

Creating committees and holding executive summits buys time and diverts attention from the real obstacles. Everyone leaves these meetings feeling good, but often nothing is different tomorrow.

Is this what will happen at Thursday's comprehensive summit on the link between minority academic success and economic empowerment, and how embracing diversity leads to success in the global economy?

The summit at the Lexington Convention Center is sponsored by the Governor's Office of Minority Empowerment, Finance and Administration Cabinet and the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center.

This appears more an opportunity for officials to appear serious about the problem. Perhaps they are, but how will we know?

A recent Bluegrass Institute special report on 'State of the School District: How Whites and Blacks Perform in Jefferson County Public Schools' clearly states Kentucky’s challenge in improving the academic performance of its minority students. But where is the visible action plan to hold people accountable to close performance gaps with a sense of urgency?

Wanna bet those issues won't be addressed at this summit?

Wouldn't it be great if the summit attendees issued an Action Alert like the one the Bluegrass Institute issued recently to communicate the first steps to take to close learning gaps now? Just think of the impact if the Governor put his punch behind commitments made at the summit in a similar alert!

Better yet, reverse the order of events: Hold a summit after the challenges have been addressed in order to highlight the positive progress made in improving academic success, increasing economic empowerment and embracing diversity.

But that approach would take leadership and requires courage. Actions would speak much louder than words. Any takers with the responsibility, accountability and power to make a difference?

Media coverage of Tier 5 Report

Some media coverage of the press conference held in Louisville on Monday to release our report on Tier 5 schools in Kentucky can be found here, here and here

Some good news from Kentucky testing

The plan to give a coordinated set of tests from the ACT, Incorporated to boost college preparation of Kentucky’s students seems to be working, at least for three of four academic subjects. These tests, known as “EPAS tests,” have been given to all of Kentucky’s eighth grade and tenth grade students since the fall of 2006.

A longitudinal comparison of the percentages of students scoring at or above the Benchmark scores that signal adequate preparation for college is shown in this figure. The same group of students took both tests in different years.


These students made notable improvement in performance in English between their eighth and tenth grade year. Improvement is also evident in the percentage of students who increased readiness for college level reading and science courses.

The only performance decline was in mathematics, a perennial problem subject in Kentucky.

While this first-time analysis looks at the performance of only one class, it is generally encouraging and hints that the law establishing this new testing program in Kentucky may indeed spur more students to be fully prepared for college. We will learn more next year when this same group of students takes the ACT college entrance test next spring, completing their journey through the new EPAS program.

The percentages above were computed by subtracting the cumulative percentage of students scoring just below the benchmark scores in each subject from 100 percent. The cumulative percentages are found in Table 1a in the respective years’ EXPLORE and PLAN profile summary reports.

Kentucky Department of Education reports it’s looking at charter schools

The Courier-Journal’s news article about the Bluegrass Institute’s news conference yesterday concerning the new report on Kentucky’s lowest performing schools under No Child Left Behind contains a remarkable set of comments from the Kentucky Department of Education.

Says the Courier, Kentucky’s new education commissioner, Dr. Terry Holliday, is actively considering bringing charter schools to Kentucky. He (undoubtedly assisted by department staff members) is “examining potential costs, oversight rules and other issues surrounding charter schools.”

Department spokesperson Lisa Gross also said that, “We're not anti-charter, and we support looking into them.”

Perhaps so, but this is the first time I ever recall seeing anything about the department even exploring the idea of charter schools. Certainly, this is good news, and, as Kentucky’s leading organization pushing charter schools, the Bluegrass Institute hopes to interface with this exciting new effort that, done right, offers notable promise of improving education in Kentucky.

Show your support Kentucky

Show your support for Charter Schools in Kentucky by voting "Yes" in our latest poll question at www.bipps.org.

Jefferson County Bus Mess Continues

- Report: Five-year olds experiencing two to two and one half hour bus rides

Check the story out here.

New Bluegrass Institute NCLB Tier 5 Schools Report “catches a WAVE (TV)”

Here is WAVE 3 TV coverage of the press conference for the release of the new Bluegrass Institute report on the performance of Kentucky's No Child Left Behind Tier 5 schools.

There is a link on this page to the one-minute On-Air coverage from August 24, 2009.

You can read the report itself by clicking here.

Promise to change Kentucky's failing schools 'not kept'

A new Bluegrass Institute report highlights the Kentucky Department of Education’s failure to implement promised changes to address continual long-term poor performance in the commonwealth’s worst schools.

Click here to read entire news release.

The 'bottom line': Freedom

Bowling Green resident Mike Kanan told Daily News reporter Jenna Mink that "the bottom line has to be everybody gets health care."

No, Mike.

The "bottom line has to be" that everybody is free to make their own decisions.

The "bottom line has to be" that decisions about medical care are made by doctors and their patients, not the government.

The "bottom line has to be" not only that the government stays out of the health-insurance business, but that it encourages competition among private insurers and providers.

Feds not buying excuses for Kentucky’s lack of charter schools?

As we mentioned in earlier blogs such as here, President Obama and US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan are stressing that states that want a part of the more than $4 billion second-tier education stimulus money, known as the “Race to the Top Fund,” have to meet some conditions. One mentioned frequently is “increasing the supply of high-quality charter schools.”

Kentucky doesn’t even have charter schools let alone any plans to increase their numbers, but education leaders here said that wouldn’t leave us “out” because our School Based Decision Making Councils (SBDM) were a suitable substitute.

Well, the word now circulating in education circles here is the SBDM ruse isn’t going to fly.

I guess the feds figured out the obvious – real charter schools are nothing like Kentucky’s SBDM schools.

Real charters are important incubators of education reforms because they are released from compliance with the huge number of onerous regulations that burden regular schools, SBDM schools included.

That doesn’t mean the charters can run amuck, however. Real charters have a local chartering organization, a university for example, that provides up close and personal oversight while allowing the freedom to move out quickly on new ideas.

The chartering organization often provides lots of support beyond oversight, as well. And, that help is custom-tailored to that specific school’s needs.

No Frankfort-dominated program such as our SBDM system can ever hope to match such local oversight and flexibility.

So, watch out for changes to positions about charter schools in Kentucky. With a share, maybe a significant share, of $4 billion plus hanging in the balance, the discussion about charter schools for the Bluegrass State is definitely heating up.

State Representative Stan Lee has already pre-filed a bill to bring charters to Kentucky, and even some Kentucky educators actually are starting to say this might be a good piece of legislation. Furthermore, because the second-tier education money will be awarded in two phases, a quick passage of a charter bill early in the next legislative session might help Kentucky in the “Race to the Top.”

How not to run an assessment program

An interesting article from New York shows how a state can corrupt a testing program to create an image of school success that does not exist.

Don’t snicker too much at New York, though. Educator attempts to fool the public have not been confined to that state. Kentucky’s “good ole” CATS assessment was pretty inflated, too.

CATS told us our schools were making great progress while more stable and credible assessments like the ACT and the National Assessment of Educational Progress, properly analyzed for huge student demographic differences that exist in the different states, showed Kentucky’s progress was actually rather slow and not at all exemplary.

I hope the people redesigning Kentucky’s assessment don’t set it up to get "CATS-flated" over time, as well.

Jefferson County school bus nightmare

We have written extensively here, here, here, here, here and
here about the clearly objectionable school busing plan in Jefferson County Public Schools. Under the new plans, five-year old children are being bused more than 20 miles, one way, to school and have to make multiple bus changes.

Now, the consequences of long school bus rides are coming home to roost as one furious Louisville parent is alleging that busing in the school district is negligent. Her kids arrived home after a 90-minute, 90-degree day ordeal that should never happen to a Kindergartener.

According to the Courier-Journal, this rightly outraged parent has filed formal charges with the Louisville Metro Police and with the Child Protective Services.

The students involved in this specific incident only live 15 minutes away from their school. The district is claiming the long ride was just a start up problem with bus scheduling that can be fixed.

However, it is clear that kids facing a planned 20 plus mile bus drive, one way, through metropolitan Louisville will face similar conditions every day. There isn’t a practical way to make their travel time shorter.

So, stand by for more charges of child abuse.

After all, what else can you call a crazy plan that requires five-year old kids to bus more than 20 miles to an inner-city school while negotiating as many as three bus changes each way?

Kentucky private school graduates surpass on the 2009 ACT

For the first time this year, Kentucky’s private/home school scores can be calculated immediately following the main ACT news release, thanks to much better coverage of the scores in the Kentucky Department of Education’s news release, which now includes data for just public school students.


It is clear that the private sector is significantly outperforming our public schools in every area, even in science, where the investment in laboratory equipment is sometimes a major challenge for non-public schooling programs.

For more on this, including source information for the calculation, check the expanded www.freedomkentucky.org article.

Also, don't miss the next article below, which has data and links to more 2009 ACT results and analysis.

National report on ACT scores is out

– Kentucky faces major challenges

The ACT, Incorporated, which administers the ACT college entrance test, just released results for each state’s 2009 high school graduates. The news for Kentucky is sobering.

For example, this is the first year that all of Kentucky’s graduates took the ACT, a participation rate of 100 percent. Not very far behind us, a high percentage of Mississippi’s high school graduates also took the ACT in this graduating class, 93 percent to be precise.

Those rates are close enough to make a comparison of scores for the two states worthwhile, which I do in the graph below.


Notice that while Kentucky edges out Mississippi by half a point on the overall average ACT Composite Score for all students, that advantage evaporates when performance of the different racial groups is compared.

In every single case, Mississippi’s different racial groups outscore their peers here in Kentucky. Every case!

The only reason Kentucky’s overall average score is higher than Mississippi’s is because we have an unfair advantage – our student population is predominantly White, while almost half of the students in Mississippi are from other racial groups that score lower on the ACT. That demographic difference places Mississippi at a serious disadvantage when the only analysis attempted is a simplistic comparison of overall average scores.

This demographic problem in interpreting state to state test scores isn’t new. We have written before, such as here, that comparing any state to state scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress has become highly problematic because of very different racial make-ups of the student populations. That is now also true for the ACT.

When I looked at the new ACT scores for just Whites and African-American/Black students for those states that had high graduate participation rates in the assessment, the following two graphs resulted.




Our Whites scored dead last against their peers in other high ACT participation rate states, and our Blacks only did better than their peers in Michigan, where the disastrous collapse of the automobile industry is wrecking havoc.

Certainly, the new ACT results are important. They provide a good indication of whether students are properly prepared for college or not. The results from this year’s graduates also strongly indicate that Senate Bill 1 from the last regular legislative session was badly needed in Kentucky. Obviously, our CATS-dominated education program wasn’t getting kids ready for what they needed next. Fortunately, we have now thrown out CATS and are in the process of revising our education standards with the goal of making them better aligned with what our kids really need. The new ACT data shows the effort comes none to soon.

Furthermore, the legislature’s wisdom in requiring 100 percent testing in Kentucky with the ACT, something the Bluegrass Institute favored, is now apparent. At least now we have some fairly trustworthy information about just how bad things really are. CATS never gave us that.

In fact, one comment on the importance of the ACT results comes from a most interesting source, former Kentucky Commissioner of Education Gene Wilhoit. He is quoted in the ACT news release as saying, “We applaud ACT for showing where we need to elevate state standards.”

To that, I can only say, amen!

There is a lot more to the new ACT story, including the ACT’s recommendations on what Kentucky can do to improve its performance. You can find that in “ACT College Entrance Test Results for 2009 High School Graduates,” a new freedomkentucky.org Wiki item.

Taxes, tolls or tighter spending

Some want to raise taxes to pay for a new bridge in Northern Kentucky. Commentator Jim Waters agrees with those who say cut wasteful spending instead.

Click here to listen to the commentary.

Obama administration still pushing charter schools

– States like Kentucky that don’t have them could lose out on second tier stimulus money

ABC News reports the Obama administration isn’t backing off its often cited position that states which limit charter schools could lose out big time on the second round of second tier education stimulus money, often called the “Race to the Top” money.

With a pie of $4 billion to distribute, the feds have caught a lot of state government attention, and there definitely is an increased interest in Kentucky about these public school alternatives that give parents some real school choice options.

Courier on the Gatton Academy – Telling a story but missing the big picture

The Courier-Journal ran a nice article on Sunday about the Gatton Academy at Western Kentucky University. This public-boarding-school-on-a-college-campus operates as just about the only charter school Kentucky has (the only other example includes the Model Lab Schools at Eastern Kentucky University).

Gatton Academy enrolls about 120 of Kentucky’s most promising high school students in an enriched math and science environment. The kids get challenges suitable to their considerable skills, and, as the Courier’s article points out, everyone stands to benefit.

But, why does Kentucky only have one such academy, and why is it so far away from so many areas of the state including at least one region – Appalachia – that even the Courier realizes needs better educational opportunities?

Why, if Gatton is so great, don’t we locate similar academies at all our universities?

In fact, Courier-Journal new staff, why doesn’t Louisville have a similar school at the U of L? As one of Kentucky’s two research universities, isn’t U of L even better equipped to handle highly promising math and science students than Western?

Finally, for that matter, why don’t we have more choices for all of our kids? Why does a kid have to be one of the top 120 in the entire state before his family gets a choice option for a better education? Why is Kentucky still one of only 10 states – a number that will diminish if Washington has its way – that refuses most of our kids and their parents the opportunity for choice that a general charter school program provides?

Right now, Kentucky only has 120 special kids. We at the Bluegrass Institute think all our kids and parents should have an opportunity to be special.

Who attends your child's school?

– Powerful new Wiki database has answers

The Bluegrass Institute is launching a powerful set of searchable databases in its freedomkentucky.org Wiki site.

Much of the data has never been available to the public on line before. The increased availability of data ranging from school enrollment to city checkbook registers will help researchers and citizens to better evaluate the performance of governmental agencies.

One exciting new tool in the Web site is a database of the student membership, or enrollment, by race and sex for each public school in Kentucky. Such school-level data has not been on line before. The new database empowers any interested individual to learn about the enrollment and racial breakdown of the student population in any Kentucky public school.

This data can also enable researchers to do more. For example, one year ago the Bluegrass Institute used this school enrollment database and a graduation rate estimation process developed by Johns Hopkins University to create a report that estimates high school graduation rates by sex and race in Jefferson County schools. Such disaggregated data has never been available for individual schools before.

Now, thanks to the availability of this new database, any interested individual can use the same formulas to get a reasonable estimate of disaggregated graduation rates for any Kentucky high school.

The new set of databases contains many other useful reference sources such as checkbooks for school districts. Anyone interested in issues in Kentucky will want to cruise to www.freedomkentucky.org to learn more.

Jim Waters to host The Pulse

Jim Waters, director of policy and communications, will host The Pulse on NewsRadio 630 WLAP-AM Monday thru Wednesday, August 17-19, from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Listen online at www.wlap.com.

Best and worst ACT performers in science

I wrote yesterday about the percentages of students in our public high schools that were adequately prepared for math in college based on newly released testing of Kentucky 11th grade students from the ACT.

Now, here are the top and bottom 20 schools for ACT science. The tables show the percentage of students who reached the ACT Benchmark score in science (24) that indicates a student should have good odds of passing a freshman course in biology.

The findings here are consistent with the math results.




First, just as we saw for math, it is painfully evident that where a child goes to school can have an enormous impact on learning. Some schools get far more students ready for college science than others do, and sometimes that vast difference can be found within a single school district.

Second, promises in KERA have not been kept. Twenty years later, too many students remain trapped in schools where few, if any, children are being adequately prepared for college.

Third, as was true for math, these science ACT results provide compelling evidence that Louisville’s school busing plans have been a failure. Louisville schools are liberally located in both the top 20 and bottom 20 lists above. If busing worked, the performance of schools in Louisville would be roughly equal. It most definitely isn’t.

The ACT results show something is terribly wrong with our schools, and parents badly need more options on where they can have their children educated.

If parents could choose, the bureaucrats would lose

A new poll conducted by the Friedman Foundation indicates that parents of all political stripes and economic groups want more choices when it comes to educating their children.

Click here to read the entire column.

One Kentucky school district gets it right

– Careful planning leads to tight budget and a TAX CUT!

Hats off to the local board of education and the entire crew at the Beechwood Independent School District.

On top of having one of the very best educational programs in Kentucky, the district has accomplished that with one of the more modest, but well-managed budgets in the state.

Now, just when hard-pressed taxpayers in the district need it, thanks to Beechwood’s great fiscal management, the district has actually approved a TAX CUT at the very same time other districts up and down the state are screaming that they need still more money.

Beechwood Superintendent Glen Miller is quick to point out that the district has not sacrificed academics to make this happen, and there is great evidence that he is refreshingly on target with that statement (how many others have promised the same, only to produce continuing poor results?).

For example, I blogged yesterday about the top and bottom performing high schools on the recent ACT 11th grade math testing in Kentucky.

Beechwood High School was number one in the state among Kentucky's 233 public high schools for the percentage of students who are ready for college math. NUMBER ONE!

I’ll post the ACT science results later today, but Beechwood was NUMBER THREE in the state for the percentage of students on track to pass their first college level science course. WOW!

Beechwood High also ranked NUMBER ONE on ACT reading and NUMBER ONE on ACT English for the percentage of kids ready for college in those academic areas. WOW!

Beechwood High’s school accountability index ranked NUMBER EIGHT in Kentucky on the now defunct CATS assessments in 2008, as well.

While CATS is now gone, if the assessment had continued, Beechwood High’s school accountability index of 95.9 meant the school could have made no further improvement all the way to 2014 and it still would have avoided all sanctions and would actually have been considered to have met its CATS goals.

And, the school accomplished all of this remarkable academic performance despite the fact that in 2008 the entire school district’s per pupil funding for current expenses ranked only 159 out of 174 school districts.

Kentucky’s new education commissioner needs to look at what is happening in Beechwood right away. Beechwood gets it right, and they do it economically.

New ACT results expose dramatic differences in Kentucky high schools

New results from ACT testing of all Kentucky’s 11th grade students expose enormous gaps in performance in Kentucky’s high schools.

The two tables below were developed from an Excel file from the Kentucky Department of Education.

The tables show the ACT math performance for the 20 best and 20 worst high schools in the state. Each table shows the percentage of students in each school that reached the ACT Benchmark score of 22 in math. That score indicates students are likely to get passing grades in a credit bearing freshman college algebra course.


In the top 20 listing, note that school size isn’t a terribly important indicator of performance. That goes against ideology that was heavily pushed in some quarters that smaller schools are better. For example, both the very large Paul Laurence Dunbar High School and the tiny Paintsville High had virtually identical success in preparing their students for college level math work.

On a very disappointing note, observe that only a handful of schools in the state prepare more than half of their students for college math. That’s lousy performance any way you look at it.

At the other end of the spectrum, some of Kentucky’s high schools do an absolutely deplorable job in teaching math to all students. In some cases, none of the students in these schools are being adequately prepared for this key college subject. This means all of those schools’ graduates are locked out of the critical Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics career fields. That’s not just bad for the students – it is also bad for Kentucky’s economy.

Notice as well that school size doesn’t seem to have much relationship to the way math is instructed in these bottom-performing schools, either. Tiny schools are interspersed with much larger enrollment schools, just as happens with the list of the top performers.


There are some lessons here.

First, it is painfully evident that where a child goes to school can have an enormous impact on learning.

Second, it is also evident that nearly two decades after the start of KERA, the promise of high performance for all our children is woefully not being kept. When students are trapped in schools where not even a single child is being adequately prepared for college, something is terribly wrong, and parents badly need more options on where they can have their children educated.

Third, the ACT results provide compelling evidence that Louisville’s school busing plans have been a failure. Louisville schools are liberally located in both the top 20 and bottom 20 lists above. If busing worked, the performance of schools in Louisville would be roughly equal. It most definitely isn’t.

The courts looking at Louisville need to come to grips with the very evident truth in the new ACT data. Busing will not fix bad schools. Busing just perpetuates the existence of those bad schools while they continue to mess up student lives. The only difference is that with busing, a slightly different, bused in group of children suffers. But, the education failure continues.

More on ACT – How we compare

Several other states conduct ACT testing of all their 11th grade students with the ACT college entrance test. Here is how we compare to two states that have published recent data just for their 11th grade ACT administration.


As you can see, we have room to improve.

Data Sources: KY, CO, and MI Department of Education Web sites

Note in particular that while Kentucky LOST ground between 2008 and 2009, Michigan GAINED ground

Note: Colorado 2009 data not yet available

Black/White college readiness gaps remain huge

We have been posting articles on the new ACT scores for Kentucky’s 11th grade students, including some information from the ACT Profile Report that you probably are not going to hear about elsewhere.

Here is another graph from the Profile Report that shows the gap in college preparation for Kentucky’s Black students is a huge problem. The ACT college readiness benchmark scores indicate a student has good odds of passing the first related college courses.


(Note: click on the picture to enlarge it)

Sadly, as the graph shows, only two percent – that’s all, just two percent – of our Black kids are on track for college. Compare that to 12 percent of our White kids and a much higher 28 percent of our Asian-American students.

By the way, that relatively high figure for our Asian-American students shows much higher college readiness scores can be achieved by all our 11th grade students.

Still, the sad fact is that very few of our kids are really being prepared for post-secondary education by our overly CATS focused education system. Once again, whatever CATS was testing, it wasn’t what our kids needed. Our educators and the Kentucky Board of Education need to keep that thoroughly in mind as they revise our testing program from CATS to what will hopefully be a much better system.

You can find more about the ACT in the freedomkentucky.org Wiki site here.

College preparation of our 11th graders is woeful

The new ACT report for our 11th grade students is out, and the data is very disappointing. The ACT Profile Report indicates that overall only 11 percent of all our 11th grade students are on track for college. That’s a scant improvement of one percentage point from last year, a rate of improvement that is simply unacceptable.

In the critical areas of math and science, the ACT results show our students are indeed woefully under-prepared.


These flat results for the second year of 100 percent ACT testing of Kentucky high school students also indicate that the lack of emphasis on the ACT and college preparation under our old CATS system was a grave mistake. The ACT and the 10th grade PLAN test, also from ACT, only counted for a measly 5 percent of the total CATS score for our high schools. Thus, our schools continued to focus on whatever CATS thought was important, which clearly isn’t what our kids need for postsecondary education, and both our students and the state have suffered in consequence.

For more on the ACT results, check out the freedomkentucky.org Wiki site here.

Political influences 'reduced,' not eliminated

What an inspiring group of leaders we have looking out for our interests in Frankfort! Gov. Steve Beshear says outgoing transportation Secretary Joe Prather has "reduced political influences."

Wow...That makes me feel soooooooo much better. I was worried that with these yet-to-be-fulfilled promises to make government more transparent that the best policies for cleaning house at the huge transportation cabinet were being neglected!

But we don't really need any more than the politicians telling us that everything is great, do we?

Just one thing left out of this story: Prather's tenure included putting up new traffic lights near his home in Hardin County the very day he began his job.

"The signals were installed despite an agency review that found them unnecessary."

It appears we're "traveling" in the right direction, doesn't it?

Take Action: Close black-white education gaps

Efforts to improve education, especially for black students, have failed to produce anything close to acceptable results in Jefferson County. It’s time to take action!

Click here to read entire Action Alert.

ACT scores – Expanding the story

New data on ACT college entrance test scores for 2009 are starting to trickle out. About a week from now, the ACT, Inc. will release a nationwide report about how high school graduates in all states performed (scheduled to be released on August 19).

However, two days ago scores from special, Kentucky statewide 11th grade testing were released, and you can find some of that 11th grade ACT data on the freedomkentucky.org Wiki site.

Jim Waters had some initial comments on those 11th grade results, but the data reveal a lot of problems beyond the overall message that less than half of our students are college-ready, so let’s discuss the new scores in greater detail.

Gaps continue

One of the major disappointments of Kentucky’s education reform, which celebrates it’s 20th anniversary next year, is that promises to fix racial and disadvantaged student achievement gaps have not been kept. That is dramatically clear in the new ACT data.

Overall, 11th grade White students in Kentucky got an ACT Composite score three full points higher than the state’s Black 11th graders achieved, 18.6 versus only 16.6. On the 36-point ACT scale, that is a huge difference.

Even worse, although the gap actually narrowed slightly for the two racial groups between 2008 and 2009, that only happened because the White ACT Composite score actually dropped 0.3 points in that one-year interval. That is not the way we want to reduce gaps! In addition, with Whites making up the vast majority of our school enrollment, a drop in their scores has dramatic implications for the overall ability of the state to generate more college graduates at a time when this is a widely recognized and vital need.

Blacks aspiring to go to college especially at disadvantage

While it is obvious that some 11th grade students have no interest in going on to college, the ACT provides separate scores for those students who clearly demonstrate an intention to go to college by taking the core course load that colleges desire. While 58 percent of Kentucky’s 11th grade Whites took the core courses colleges desire in the 2008-09 school year, only 41 percent of the state’s Blacks did. And, even though a notably smaller percentage of Blacks took the college curriculum, their ACT Composite score gap was larger compared to college bound Whites than the overall gap was for all students.

Males falling further behind

In 2008 the female – male ACT Composite score gap for Kentucky’s 11th grade students was only 0.5 points. That swelled to a 0.7 point gap in 2009 when female scores rose slightly while male scores dropped slightly. This adds to other evidence that the Kentucky Education Reform has been boy unfriendly.

One final note: the data released on Kentucky 11th grade testing is not fairly comparable to the data for 2009 graduates that the ACT will release in a week. Because only a handful of states do 100 percent testing of 11th grade students, blanket state to state comparison of ACT scores isn’t appropriate. So, watch out for other media outlets that try to do such simplistic comparisons. We’ll be talking more about that as the rest of the ACT data becomes available, so check back here for the “right stuff.”

ACT scores: Less than half of Kentucky's students ready for college-level English

More evidence that Kentucky's public-education system is failing to adequately prepare students for college, much less the rigors of the 21st century global marketplace, are splattered on today's front page.

Notice the continued excuse-making for ACT scores which "show that less than half of public high school juniors in Kentucky are ready to do college-level work in English, algebra and other subjects."

Instead of accepting that the commonwealth is not preparing its students for the future, longtime KDE spokeswoman Lisa Gross offered two excuses:

Excuse No. 1: "Overall, the scores have not changed a great deal."

Excuse No. 2: "Other states face similar difficulties."

Gross admits that "we're not meeting the needs of minority kids for some reason," yet offers no plan for finding the reason and meeting those needs.

Health care plan threatens Kentuckians' freedoms; reps should 'face the music'

Kentuckians should be concerned about the latest attempt by the White House to suppress online opposition of its scary health-care plan.

This Reason.TV video offers a frightening report about the White House asking the public to report any information on health care reform they receive from e-mails and blogs that “seems fishy.”

They have essentially asked the public to become watchdogs for the very thing that many do not want to begin with. Notice this video includes the President himself stating he’s “a proponent of a single payer, universal health care program.”

The Congressional Budget Office has released information on the web about health care reform. The problem does not lie with those who pass on the information provided; it lies with those providing the information in the beginning.

Kentuckians should demand their representatives come home and face the music on this issue – as others have done around the country.

Chandler's constituents demand to hear from him on massive health-care changes

Dear Congressman Chandler:

Health-care legislation that will have a tremendous impact on the people in your district is being rushed through Congress.

The proposed legislation contains massive changes that need explanation.

Since you were sent to Washington to represent the people in Kentucky's Sixth District, it is vital that you share your knowledge and insight on what this proposed legislation will do for - and to - them and all Kentuckians.

Set aside some time - lots of it - and pick a public place that accomodates hundreds of people. Invite everyone in the district to come and get their questions answered.

Your constituents are hearing too many conflicting sound bites on proposed legislation that mandates massive changes in our health-care system.

We are worried, confused and concerned about both the details and the overall impact this proposed legislation will have. We see this as a new government mandate containing freedom-robbing provisions that will take our money and deny us choices.

It's time to give we the people a chance to directly -- and publicly -- address you. We are waiting ...


The Citizens of Kentucky's Sixth District

Opinions vs. falsehoods

Not surprisingly, the Louisville Courier-Journal sides with the judge and against Jefferson County Public Schools' parents and students in the ongoing busing controversy. That's been the consistent stance of their editorials and op-ed pages all along.

However, I'm just wondering upon what basis the editorial writer of Thursday's editorial, "Heyburn's ruling," makes the following statement about the Jefferson County Public Schools' old race-based student assignment plan that was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court last year:

"In fact, the old student assignment plan was popular with Jefferson County families and worked well. It also provided a framework for making this a strong unitary district, with effective support coming from all interested parties."

With a multitude of parents being forced to put their children on a bus--only to be bused across town just to meet some kind of racial quota--combined with hundreds more being denied transfer requests by the system, I'm just curious what spurred the editorial writer's assertion that "the old student assignment plan was popular."

More insight into the Jefferson County Schools busing plan

A few days ago, U.S. District Judge John G. Heyburn II made a legal ruling supporting the incredibly poorly thought out Jefferson County school busing plan that we have discussed before.

So, I thought it would be interesting to look at the academic performance of one school where a child will be forced to bus something like 20 miles, one way, each day.

The school is Jefferson County’s Shelby Elementary School. It is in No Child Left Behind Tier 3 status, which means it failed during four separate school terms to meet the requirements of NCLB.

You can find the school’s NCLB report for 2008 by negotiating some menus from this page.

Here is a list from that report on the areas where this low performing school failed NCLB goals in 2008.


First of all, notice that the school didn’t fail white kids. It didn’t fail because of kids with learning disabilities, either, simply because the school had too few of them under Kentucky’s ridiculously high minimum enrollment requirements to get a score in that area (signified by the n/a designation).

This school primarily failed because of one racial group, African-Americans, which actually comprise the dominant racial group at Shelby Elementary.

If Jefferson county can dilute the number of low-scoring students in this school by busing in kids from better-off parts of the school district, it possibly will boost scores in the school, at least for a little while, without having to make any real changes in educational performance.

The real irony here is that because this school is an NCLB Tier 3 school, parents of students already attending Shelby Elementary get the right to request a transfer out of this school to a better performing one at the same time that the east end students sued to avoid being bused IN to this low performing elementary school.

Go figure!

And, then ask how a judge could miss what is going on here. How could a judge uphold a plan that requires a five-year old to make three bus changes, ranging all across town, to travel all across Jefferson County to school? What kind of educational mindset is that going to create?

Of course, aside from other things, Judge Heyburn doesn’t have a terribly good track record on school busing issues. According to the Daily News in Bowling Green, “Heyburn upheld a school assignment plan in 2004 - a decision struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court by a 5-4 vote in 2007.”

So, stand by for more on this explosive issue that goes to the heart of parent rights to insure their children get a good education. In the case of the two parents who got trampled by the school district, and then the courts, they pulled their kids out of the public school system all together. If they now win their suit on what looks like certain appeal, the damages to us taxpayers will mount that much more.

And, all the while, Shelby Elementary will go on conducting business as usual, which is to say, probably not very well. In fact, if there is a large enough change in the school’s student enrollment thanks to all the busing, that could restart its NCLB “clock.,” giving the school’s staff a “bye” for several more years while education in the school continues to wallow.

Freedom cuts through the fog

The late Milton Friedman’s doctrine of capitalism may not be a perfect system. But no one has come up with anything better.

Click here to read the entire column.

Does Kentucky spend the right amount on schools?

The Bluegrass Institute and the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice recently conducted an opinion poll to find out what Kentucky voters – our readers – think about the state’s education system.

I showed you what you think about the schools overall a couple of days ago.

A solid majority of you, 59 percent, think the schools are doing only a poor to fair job, at best.

Now, let’s look at what you told us about school funding.


As you can see, an overwhelming portion of you either think we spend enough now (26%) or we spend too much (44%). Less than one in three of you think we need to spend more.

Since you also don’t think the schools are doing very well, I have to conclude that you don’t think the schools are using the dollars they get in effective ways.

This is something our school bureaucracy, which constantly has its hand out for more dollars, simply must come to grips with. Our school “folk” need to figure out how to do their job more efficiently rather than just continuing to plan on getting a lot more money so they can continue as they have in the past.

The poll indicates you don’t think the past performance of Kentucky’s schools is very good, but you also don’t think more money is the answer.

‘Cap’ this policy

Even though Washington has approved the cap-and-trade climate legislation, Kathy Gornik, president of Lexington-based THIEL Loudspeakers and Bluegrass Institute chairman, points out why Americans have not done the same.

Click here to read Gornik’s article in Business Lexington on the disastrous legislation.

The cap-and-trade plan allows for a carbon emission trade market where if one company doesn’t use up all of its emissions, they can sell those emissions credits to a company on the verge of running out of allowances.

The National Black Chamber of Commerce found that this legislation would reduce the GDP by $350 billion, not to mention cut net employment by 2.5 million jobs.

Now is not the time to create yet another complicated and costly law that will harm businesses and taxpayers. Even environmentalists are disappointed with the 85 percent giveaway of carbon credits. So much for limited carbon emissions and “green” energy investments!

By Tabitha Waggoner, intern for the Bluegrass Institute

Digging deep into the Kentucky Retirement Systems' fundamentals

What? Here we go again. A new report accuses the state pension system of very questionable practices that led to the purchase of a 1.9-acre property for $752,000 in 2006 from a local veterinarian that had paid only $450,000 for it just three months earlier. Huh? The property was sold this year to the Kentucky State Police for $325,000. Wow!

This is fundamental incompetence in the oversight of other peoples' money. But apparently KRS executive director Mike Burnside thinks the matter is closed because key people involved are no longer involved.

Many processes failed before the people involved in implementing them failed. The hiring process failed when people were hired without fundamental competencies and experience to professionally evaluate all aspects of the deal. Kentuckians should be demanding to know what checks and balances are built into Kentucky Retirement Systems' processes for analyzing, justifying and approving investments, as well as assessing conflicts of interests, defining requirements for assumptions and analysis that will be provided to the board and ensuring necessary transparency is available as needed?

Putting the finger on people is one thing but the spotlight needs to be put on fundamental internal process requirements or lack thereof. Holding the Kentucky Retirement Systems' staff and the board accountable for the current state of internal processes would be a good start. If they are weak, it means another set of processes failed.

It is past time to take these organizations off automatic pilot and turn on the lights.

When good men do nothing

The greatest threat to our liberty comes not from a bunch of wild-eyed terrorists, but from good people who stand by and do nothing to defend it.

Click here to listen to the latest Bluegrass Audio.

'Extremely disappointed' over Kentucky's entire economic-development policy

Gov. Beshear is "disappointed by today's announcement" that Kentucky won't receive a federal grant for a new lithium ion electric car battery factory in Hardin County.

One of the reasons there is so much disappointment when a single project like this falls through is that Kentucky's economic-development policy doesn't produce the stream of new jobs and revenue that would improve its fiscal strength.

While we didn't land the battery factory, what companies could we land if, say, we lowered taxes and lifted stifling regulations on businesses?

Many out-of-state firms don't want to fight with labor unions, so the fact that we don't have a right-to-work policy also harms us. Beshear talked about the process for landing the battery factory being "extremely competitive," but in this global marketplace, the process for all jobs is extremely competitive.

And being the only state in the southeast region of the country without a right-to-work policy makes us even less competitive.

I wonder if Beshear might be able to feel this pain as much as he can the loss of a single, politically sensitive enterprise.

Good schools? You don’t think so

The new Bluegrass Institute/Friedman survey on “Kentucky’s Opinion on K-12 Education and School Choice” is loaded with interesting questions and answers that show what you really are thinking out there.

Here is the breakdown of responses to one key question in the report. After all the spinning from Frankfort, most of you still don’t buy the idea that Kentucky’s schools are doing either good or excellent job. In fact, a clear majority of you have decided our schools do no more than a fair job.

Heyburn's ruling favors bureaucrats over kids

Jefferson County Public Schools' Superintendent Sheldon Berman responded to Tuesday's decision by U.S. District Judge John G. Heyburn III denying a request by two families seeking an injunction against the school district's unconstitutional student-assignment plan with this gem:

"It's always difficult for parents who don't get the decision they want."

Apparently, it doesn't bother Berman in the least kids in his own district are the losers here. He's just breathing a sigh of relief that his district won the first battle in a court case designed to finally put a death knell in this disastrous school district's continual attempts to circumvent the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2007 that its race-based student assignment plan unconstitutional.

It will be interesting to see whether this bureaucrat and his judicial cohort, who repeatedly rules in favor of this failing district, gets away with sending kindergartners across town, forcing some of them to attend failing schools.

Survey: Kentucky voters overwhelmingly support school choice

A new survey conducted by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice and released today by the Bluegrass Institute shows that support for school choice in Kentucky cuts across all socioeconomic and demographic groups.

Survey Snapshots:

• More than eight of 10 likely Kentucky voters would send their children to a private, charter or virtual school or educate their children at home if they could.
• Only 23 percent of respondents rated Kentucky public schools as “good” or “excellent.”
• Nearly 50 percent of respondents said they would choose private education.
• More than 10 percent said they would send their children to charter schools – if they were available.
• Approximately 9 percent of the state’s students attend private school despite the fact that 50 percent of K-12 parents indicate they would like to send their child to a private school.

The poll surveyed 1,200 likely voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Education’s climate of intimidation

It’s no secret that more than a few education schools in this country are staffed with highly radical thinkers. That would be OK if these Ed School people were open to other points of view, but that often isn’t the case.

Far too many Ed School types take a dim view of anyone who disagrees with them. Worse, in the case of their students, disagreements can lead to outright intimidation and very serious, career ending threats.

Washington Post education reporter Jay Mathews just posted a very interesting case in point article about one teacher candidate who found out how stiff necked Ed School folk can be.

One really fascinating thing about the Mathews article is that the school involved is the lofty, highly regarded Stanford. You’d think if any school would maintain an open mind, this school would be one of them.

The Mathews story is a real eye-opener as well as a tribute to the blogging teacher candidate who refused to be intimidated by people with a very dubious agenda. The tale provides interesting insight into one education establishment’s culture of intimidation.

Sadly, that culture of intimidation doesn’t end at the edge of the campus, and it isn’t limited to Stanford. So, it’s no wonder that teachers reacting to the recent Peggy Petrilli lawsuit over wrongful dismissal and racial discrimination are doing so anonymously. While Petrilli lost her suit (appeal is contemplated), the trial exposed questionable practices such as inflated teacher and staff evaluations and dubious support from the top for principals at Fayette County Schools.

Still, teachers are afraid to speak out. After all, they have been taught that doing so brings certain reprisals. It’s a lesson well taught to educators – and classes begin even before teachers graduate from education school.