What happens when you have a disfunctional education financial accounting system

WAVE 3 TV in Louisville reports that about $60,000 of a $120,000 included in the state budget to enhance academics at Phelps High School (Pike County) actually ended up in the athletics department.

Apparently, still other funds could not be accounted for.

We’ve written plenty about the very poor MUNIS education financial accounting system in this state (here, for example, and here).

You get the nonsense in Phelps when people think the accounting is so loose that no-one will ever figure out how funds are really being spent.

Phil Moffett on KY Grassroots Radio Show

Phil Moffett, a member of the Bluegrass Institute Board of Directors, will discuss public charter schools on the KY Grassroots Radio Show at 7 p.m. on Thursday. Listen to the live stream at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/ky-grassroots-radio.

More on the Every1Reads deception in Jefferson County Schools

Jim Waters just posted an excellent commentary on the deceptive reading test results that the Jefferson County Public School system has been handing out through the Every1Reads program.

Jefferson County turned true reading scores from the Kentucky Core Content Tests (KCCT) part of the state’s CATS assessments on their ear. Instead, Jefferson County invented its own scoring system, saying that any student who scored anywhere above “Novice” on the KCCT was reading “At or Above Grade Level.”

Let’s explore what the real reading performance in Jefferson County looks like. We’ll look at claims from the Every1Reads Web site and compare them to proficiency rates for the district and the entire state on the KCCT. We’ll also make a comparison to the far more credible National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading results for Kentucky.


The red bar shows that Every1Reads claimed on average that 91.5% (rounded in the figure) of all tested students in Jefferson County scored “At or Above Grade Level” for reading (see the Every1Reads Web site for this number).

Those tested grades included three to eight plus grade 10.

While Every1Reads didn’t report a by-grade breakout, I calculated the eighth grade percent of students in Jefferson County who scored above Novice from the district’s Kentucky Performance Report for 2007.

The eighth grade percentage of students who scored above Novice was also 92 percent, equaling the overall average for all grades as shown in the figure.

Now, let’s see how Jefferson County really did against the real state standards, which do not have anything in them about “At or Above Grade Level” performance.

Jefferson County’s eighth grade students only scored 59 percent proficient on the KCCT reading assessment, far below the 92 percent Every1Reads fiction. Jefferson County also scored notably lower than the statewide eighth grade KCCT reading proficiency rate of 65 percent.

But, let’s really put this in perspective.

We know that the KCCT is an inflated assessment. That is one reason why the legislature shut down CATS and is requiring the KCCT to be revised once new state standards are in place.

How inflated is the KCCT? Look at the last bar in the graph.

On the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only 28 percent of Kentucky’s eighth grade students scored Proficient or Above. That’s all. Thus, eighth grade reading proficiency rates reported by the KCCT in 2007 are more than double those from a more credible test.

And, while there are no NAEP scores for Jefferson County, don’t forget that the district does have a lower KCCT reading proficiency rate than the overall state rate.

Draw your own conclusions about the real reading proficiency rate in Jefferson County.

It's possible to do a similar sort of analysis using the ACT EXPLORE test results for the eighth grade. If you want to see that, make a comment and I’ll add this additional evidence that Every1Reads is seriously misleading Louisville about the performance of its school system.

Cosmetology on a pig should provide the public a poke

By covering up poor academic scores, leaders of Kentucky's largest school district prove they care more about appearance than performance.

Click here to read the latest Bluegrass Beacon column from Jim Waters.

Governor should challenge education's price, performance

Gov. Steve Beshear recently laid out his budget priorities: "It's investing in education for our kids, it's maintaining our health care safety net and it's protecting the public safety."

It's past time to challenge the value added for each dollar spent in the education budget. Take Jefferson County as an example.




Have you seen or heard anyone from the Kentucky Department of Education or Jefferson County Public Schools demonstrate Pastor Stephenson's passion for improved results? That lack of urgency is a major problem.

Look at the Jefferson County check register for 2008 – 2009. Notice the money not spent in the classroom. Hmmm. Could money be better spent to improve learning? Are tough competitive bids used as much as possible to reduce or eliminate costs? Could procurements be consolidated?

Challenge this spending. Look out for the kids. Put their interests -- not the special interests -- first!

Alluring gambling vision could stymie real thinking

Some Kentucky elected officials are again becoming stimulated by the possibility of expanded gambling as a panacea for the commonwealth's budget challenges.

This state of mind is being exacerbated by Ohio's decision to approve casinos in four populated areas. Ohio did it because Michigan, Indiana and Pennsylvania did it.

William Thompson, a University of Nevada-Las Vegas professor and casino expert, says the odds of gambling revenues filling state budget holes are not great. In Ohio:

- Half the gamblers must be from out of state for it to work.

- Compulsive gamblers steal, lose jobs, have debts and go on welfare.

- A casino within 50 miles of a community doubles the rate of compulsive gambling.

- Troubled gamblers exact a social cost of about $10,000 each.

- The price tag of additional social costs could reach more than $800 million.

Kentucky leaders, like their Ohio counterparts, face a choice between fantasy-like windfall revenues from gambling or making really tough spending decisions.

Delaying the difficult decisions will only make a bad budget situation worse. Only wine gets better with age.

Happy Thanksgiving from the Bluegrass Institute

We at the Bluegrass Institute extend our best wishes to all Kentuckians for a safe and happy Thanksgiving holiday.


As a country and commonwealth, we are thankful for liberty's blessings and also extend our thoughts and prayers to those service men and women who will remain at their post defending our freedoms during this holiday. Many of those troops either are, or have been, stationed in Kentucky. We thank them and their families for their service to our country.


Here is the first-ever official Thanksgiving proclamation, offered our nation's first president:
http://www.aipnews.com/talk/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=10489&posts=1

Kentuckians see through Obama's job fair

The Obama administration plans a Dec. 3 forum on jobs and economic growth at the White House. Then the president plans to travel around the country and talk, talk, talk, talk, talk about his concern concerning the nation’s jobless rate.

But his very visible actions taking over private sector businesses, appointing anti-capitalist czars, pushing for health care mandates, supporting proposals that raise taxes and implement fines and supporting policies that would devastate Kentucky's coal industry drown out his words.

What incentive do Kentucky businesses have to have to grow and create jobs with so many anti-business policies staring them in the face?

Maybe the president should humble himself and actually read, analyze and understand the impact of the language being crafted to implement his policies.

Arrogance (except when bowing low before Japan's emperor) and ignorance of the free-market principles that made our nation great could result in voters sending Obama himself to the unemployment line in a few years.

Unfinished business

Penny Sanders, Kentucky’s first-ever director of the Office of Education Accountability, has been involved with KERA from the get-go.

So, comments in her post about “Unfinished Business” are worth everyone’s time to read.

I talked to Penny about “Unfinished Business,” and she definitely thinks it is time to look at charter schools as a way to deal with the chronic under-performing schools in the state.

By the way, Penny updates from her initial cursory analysis: there are actually several districts besides Jefferson County which had more than one Tier 5 charter school in 2009. Those are Christian County with three Tier 5 schools, and Floyd and Hardin Counties, with two Tier 5 schools each.

That doesn’t change Penny’s point that the bulk of the Tier 5 schools are in Louisville. Like us at the Bluegrass Institute, Penny says it is time to finally do something better for the kids in those schools and to start paying more than lip service to the idea that after so many years of failure, educators in chronically poor performing schools should be facing real consequences.

Louisville’s dropouts are expensive for everyone

The Alliance for Excellent Education just published an analysis of the economic costs of high school dropouts for 50 of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas. That includes this report for the Louisville area.

High schools in Louisville and the surrounding 13 counties lost over 30 percent of their students prior to graduation according to the Alliance. If that loss were cut in half, the Alliance says the added graduates would earn $27 million more and generate an additional $4 million in taxes for the region.

Per the Alliance, five high schools in the Louisville area are “Dropout Factories,” which means they graduate less than 60 percent of their students.

Those schools would be wonderful candidates for conversion to charter schools, which news reports around the country are saying do much better than regular public schools in graduating students.

WAVE 3 catches the charter school ‘wave’

WAVE 3 TV in Louisville has an excellent, two-part video series on charter schools. You get both the great positives, including a look at two concrete charter school examples from Indianapolis, and the shots thrown at charters by the naysayers.

Here’s the link to the WAVE 3 text article. The links to the two videos are on the same page, near the top.

There are some great interviews with Shelbyville Rep. Brad Montell, Louisville Pastor Jerry Stephenson, Tony Bennett, Indiana superintendent of education, and others. These people have seen what happens in charter schools and want Kentucky children to experience the same.

The lead naysayer you will hear is Jefferson County Public Schools Superintendent Sheldon Berman, Ph.D. He relies in part on a recent study by the CREDO group at Stanford to put down charters, conveniently overlooking some important findings in that study.

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

This indicates that not all charter school legislation is created equal – something we will want to watch for as our 2010 legislature convenes.

Also, the CREDO report found in general that charter school students do outperform once they have been in a charter school for more than a year or two.

If you think about it, that makes sense. Many charters are in inner city systems, and they often take in kids who are several grade levels behind. You cannot wave a magic wand and change that deficit in a day or two, or even in one school term. And Berman knows that.

Read the fine print

The proposed health care bill hasn't been read by many lawmakers. What other potentially harmful, long-winded legislation is overlooked due to length?

Click here to listen to the 90-second audio commentary.

Quote of the day

"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their kids pay for it." -- former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm

Senate race needs a 'Mr. Smith'

Political drums are banging.

The Republican Party hasn’t figured out what people want. It just might be they still aren’t listening. The Democratic Party is in complete control in Washington and those folks can't hear a thing.

Let’s hope U.S. Senate candidates Trey Grayson, Rand Paul, Daniel Mongiardo and Jack Conway set a new mark for debating real issues impacting Kentuckians. Little patience remains for the same old political spin and blame game.

How about if these gentlemen start by discussing in detail the impact on Kentucky citizens and businesses of proposed health care language, proposed cap and trade language, and proposed employee free-choice language? The key words are "in detail" and "impact."

A real battle is going on in this country. Partisanship is rampant. Liberty and freedom are under siege. Words and promises never meant less.

Do we have someone in this race with the integrity, courage and pride in America demonstrated in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”?

Let’s hope so. Our country is at risk ... and the nation is watching Kentucky.

Kentucky has the most gifted and talented kids in the nation??!!

– Yeah, Right!

I was really surprised by this one. A new report from the National Association for Gifted Children actually says, “In the 21 states that reported data, the percent of students identified as gifted ranges from less than 2% in Utah and West Virginia to over 25% in Kentucky.”

How’s that again?

Here is a graph from the report, with my added highlight about Kentucky being that special, on-the-top state.


Note that the next state in the list has at least a five percent lower identification rate.

In fact, the vast majority of the 21 states with data identify a far lower proportion of their students – at least 10 points lower – as gifted than we do in Kentucky.

Something definitely looks wrong here! Kentucky’s educators must be seriously over-identifying kids in this program.

Throwing money at school reform has a rough history

Educators are quick to forget the past, but the rest of us sometimes have better memories.

A new Gates education grant to the Pittsburgh public school system has the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review ‘going back in time’ to discuss a similar, large grant the district got in 1988. That effort just didn’t pan out.

This time, Gates is pushing better teacher training, apparently for working teachers, with a new teachers’ academy and merit pay for teachers who produce. Teachers are unquestionably the key, but it remains to be seen if the Gates-financed implementation of these new ideas in Pittsburgh will overcome calcified enthusiasm of the teaching corps in that city.

Oppressive health care bill steals Kentuckians' liberty

Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, has been analyzing the health care bills in detail. Yes, he reads, analyzes and reports.

He states claims that the 1,994-page bill that passed the house last week is not a government takeover are false:

- The bill uses the command “shall” 3,345 times as in ‘you shall” or “businesses shall”.

- The bill creates 111 government agencies, boards, commissions and other bureaucracies – all overseen by a new health-care czar.

Now come on. Those two points scream takeover.

Mr. Tanner’s article in the New York Post should be a wakeup call to all freedom-loving Kentuckians to scream ‘NO’ to anyone promoting anything close to this bill.

Why are Kentucky’s elected state officials silent? Not politically correct to stand up for freedom and liberty if it might jeopardize federal handouts?

‘NO!’

Gates really getting serious about charter schools

I wrote yesterday about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarding a $10 million grant to charter schools in Houston.

Now, a consortium of charter schools in the Los Angeles area is getting a whole lot more than that, $60 million to be exact, to develop data oriented teacher evaluation programs that will rely, in part, on test results for students.

This is the kind of forward-thinking “stuff” that you can do quickly with charter school flexibility. Gates knows that.

Meanwhile, Kentucky has nothing like this.

Why does a state that likes to pride itself on education innovation continue to opt out of one of the most promising developments in school reform ever? Are the best interests of Kentucky’s students really going to be forever subordinated to the self interests of a few teachers’ union people?

Let’s hope that gets changed when the legislature comes to Frankfort in January. Our kids deserve a better deal. And, Bill Gates and company apparently understand where that better deal may lie.

Kentucky leaders' silence is deafening

Texas Gov. Rick Perry mixed no words in stating it is time for Americans to stand up against Washington. He says that the Obama administration is "hell-bent" on taking this great country toward socialism.

Washington's intended "change" will devastate most Kentuckians. Gov. Beshear talks economic development. Proposed health care mandates, taxes on small businesses and targeting of our coal industry will kill Kentucky's economic development potential.

Yet, our Kentucky elected leaders silence while the fight for our freedom and liberty rages is deafening.

Millions more for Houston’s charter schools

– Not a dime for Kentucky because we don’t have any

Down Houston, Texas, way, they just got a huge influx of money, $10 million worth, from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. The cash will double the number of Knowledge is Power Program charter school seats in the city. That money will enable the KIPP schools, as they are known, to raise an additional $60 million more in bond money despite the currently very tight financial markets.

Why is Gates doing this? Vicki Phillips, director of education for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, says, “…charter schools have proven to be extremely effective at improving access to quality education.”

The Houston Chronicle adds that charters “…have gained popularity with their long school days, Saturday classes and track record of enrolling low-income, minority students in college.”

Meanwhile, Kentucky won’t get a dime from Gates for charter schools because our state doesn’t allow them.

Houston’s KIPP charters are now so popular that it will take a $70 million building campaign to house the additional 11,000 plus students who want into a Houston KIPP school but cannot be accommodated in the current facilities.

Why do Kentucky kids continue to miss out on the important public school option of charter schools while kids in Houston and in 39 states across the nation, especially low-income and minority students, are reaping major benefits?

Quote of the day: If it moves, tax it ... even if it's health insurance

"If you have insurance, you get taxed. If you don't have insurance, you get taxed. If you need a life-saving medical device, you get taxed. If you need prescription medicines, you get taxed."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky on the Senate Democrats' health care bill

Charter high schools showing dramatic graduation results

Far too many Kentucky kids are mired today in high schools that are not meeting their needs. These students often lose hope and often drop out. In some of the state’s most challenging high schools, the situation is so bad that studies by Johns Hopkins University actually label the schools as “dropout factories.”

Meanwhile, charter high schools in other states are starting to turn in remarkably good results. These charters are still public high schools, but they are freed from a lot of the red tape that often prevents regular high schools from succeeding with today’s students.

A recent example of the power of charter high schools comes from Providence, Rhode Island. The Providence Journal’s news blog reports two inner city charter high schools named Times2 Academy and Textron Chamber of Commerce Academy “maxed” their graduation rates at 100 percent in the latest Rhode Island state report. That exceeds the rate at the city's most competitive secondary school and even surpassed performance at the suburban Barrington High School.

How did they do it? Smaller classes, individual attention and flexible schedules that allow kids to work and still study effectively seem to be part of the answer. But the real key is that without a lot of red tape restrictions, both of the Providence charter high schools are free to do whatever creative things they need to in order to accommodate their customers – the students.

Unfortunately for us, charter schools can only be created when the state specifically allows them, and that is a law Kentucky currently lacks.

However, at least two charter school bills are already pre-filed for the 2010 legislative session, and people who never knew the term before are now talking about charter schools frequently. For the sake of our kids, let’s hope the legislature votes in 2010 to give them the sort of advantage that kids in Providence already enjoy.

What happens when states get more honest graduation rate reports?

We’ve discussed inaccurate graduation rate reporting in Kentucky many times such as here and here.

According to the latest Kentucky Department of Education nonacademic report, covering the Class of 2008, Kentucky supposedly graduated 84.52 percent of its high school students. Keep that figure in mind.

Well, the fact is that the formula used to fabricate that number was officially audited in 2006 and found unreliable. The real graduation rate in Kentucky is much lower.

How much lower?

We really won’t know for sure until the department gets its troubled Infinite Campus student tracking system up and on line for four years, perhaps around 2013 or so.

But the state of Oregon just got more honest with its citizens, and here is what the Oregonian says happened. The newspaper says that once more accurate reporting was conducted, “…only 68 percent of the class graduated within four years -- starkly lower than the 84 percent graduation rate the state reported for the same class just two months ago, based on its previous, looser definition.”

Hmmm – 84 percent – why does that number sound familiar?

So, what happened in Oregon might be the kind of number change that will happen here once honesty finally overcomes an unfortunate tendency in our education circles to fool us with figures.

'Tis the season to be free

Kentuckians stood their ground and won against the governor's "holiday tree." What other Grinch-like policies with far-greater consequence would change with the same kind of vocal involvement of a passionate citizenry?

Click here to read the latest Bluegrass Beacon column.

Washington forgot to ask if you have the money

Washington prints money. Oops, you can't. That's a problem.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., rammed H.R. 3962, "The Affordable Health Care of America Act," through the House. The bill will spend a lot of your money.

The estimated cost for H.R. 3962 for the average family is over $15,000. Do you have the money to pay? Will you go to jail because you just can’t pay for their mandates?

Washington's politicians claim health care reform is an emergency.

The only emergency is that we have a Congress that creates 2,000-plus page bills, doesn’t allow anyone time to read or understand them and then forces votes. Talk about negligence.

This legislation will impact every Kentuckian. Don't you wish you had someone with real courage and ability to challenge this approach?

There is a reason the politicians are not being transparent, don’t want citizens to know, understand or analyze their mammoth "emergency" bill full of shenanigans.

Enough of their games. It's your money, not theirs. It's time they understand that!

The naked truth

The transparency train has left the station with a few lawmakers, but more are needed before Kentucky catches up with other states.

Click here to listen to the 90-second audio commentary.

Kentucky ‘s legislature drives us to a top-15 ranking

No, it’s not a positive ranking like John Calipari’s Kentucky Wildcats. It's the PEW Center on the States ranking of states in fiscal peril.

What it shows: Kentucky is one of the 15 states most at risk!

The ranking is based on several factors, including loss of state revenue, size of budget gaps, unemployment and foreclosure rates, poor money management practices and state laws governing passage of budgets.

What an opportunity for our legislators to jump Kentucky up in the rankings with a new budget session approaching.

Maybe we can hit the top 10 by growing the unfunded liabilities created by the very sweet health-and-pension packages for legislators and state workers, growing the size of the state workforce, building more new arenas around the state, not legislating our state's rights to slow crushing federal mandates, and hitting small businesses with more taxes.

Business as usual would accomplish much of this. Easy.

Just think of the budget gaps those proven practices could create.

Watch out, California. Kentucky's on the move!

What do NAEP scores for learning disabled students really show?

– Quick answer – no-one is really sure

Over at the Prichard Blog they are happy about a simplistic comparison of the performance of Kentucky’s students with learning disabilities on the federal government’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests.

Let’s temper that enthusiasm a bit.

As recently reported in Education Week (subscription), the people running the NAEP are uncomfortable about the way they test these kids and how many of them get excluded from the tests. The governing board that oversees the NAEP has been uncomfortable for a decade, ever since I pointed out issues about uneven exclusion rates from state to state on the NAEP 1998 reading assessment.

Right now, no one knows how a number of factors might be impacting the validity of the scores for these special kids, not even the people running the NAEP program.

So, approach those NAEP learning disabled scores with caution – the people running the program do.

Read more »

‘Singapore Math’ is a world-beater

– How come only a “handful” of Kentucky school districts use it?

Kentucky schools have chronic problems with teaching math. For example, white eighth grade students – they comprise the vast majority of all students here – were recently outscored in math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress by their peers in 42 other states around nation. Kentucky’s white kids only bested whites in one state, and it wasn’t Mississippi. Mississippi’s whites actually tied us!!!

In sharp contrast, the math program in Singapore consistently comes out on top every time there is international testing such as the Trends in International Math and Science.

Since Singapore math is readily available in a North American edition, and because math instruction here badly needs improvement, you’d think all Kentucky schools would be picking it up.

Well, guess again.

According to the November 2009 “Kentucky Teacher” article titled “Singapore Math digs deeper into mathematics learning (See Page 5),” only a “handful” of school districts in the state are using Singapore Math.

In fact, the article only names two districts, Fayette County and Marshall County, which use this top notch program. And, both have only used it for a short period of time even though “Singapore Math has rated tops in the nation in mathematics achievement for more than 12 years,” according to Natalee Feese. Ms Feese is the Fayette County mathematics coordinator.

Singapore does exactly what state education leaders said was needed during the CATS Task Force meetings in late 2008 and in the discussions that led up to Senate Bill 1 in early 2009. It goes deeper into fewer subjects rather than doing the ineffective “mile wide, inch deep” sort of thing that current math programs in Kentucky tend to do.

Says Marshall County teacher Julie Teague, “Singapore Math teaches each concept to mastery. The philosophy behind the program is that students gain a deep understanding and develop number sense, which will help them be more successful when entering higher-level mathematics classes at the middle school and high school levels.”

Teague adds that the program has a focus on problem solving – which is exactly what KERA has supposedly required from day one. She didn’t say it, but Singapore also helps kids master fractions, which is absolutely critical to learning algebra and higher level math.

I hope a lot more districts pay attention to Fayette and Marshall County. Their programs are too new to show results, but if they are competently taught as in other parts of the US and in Singapore itself, we should see some good things happening soon.

Certainly, if Kentucky’s kids are going to successfully compete against the rest of the world, they need what works best worldwide – and it looks like that is Singapore Math.

Shhh - Kentucky's public option failed

In 1994, state lawmakers created Kentucky Access, a public insurance option with the intention of lowering premiums and covering more citizens.

Auston McCay, a Bowling Green insurance agent and former state health insurance chairman, helped craft Kentucky Access.

"Kentucky's plan was a trial run for a national plan and when it kind of blew up then very little was said about it later," notes McCay.

Only 4,500 out of 4.2 million Kentuckians signed up.

Hmmm. Why aren't Kentucky elected officials beating down the doors in Congress to communicate the reality of this failed public-option test? Oh, not politically correct. Oh, our elected officials beg for federal dollars.

Worse, maybe the Kentucky legislators like the precedents being set in Washington. They can just put heavy taxes, fines and jail time in their new legislative initiatives to consume any discretionary spending Kentuckians may have left.

Taxes and fines are certainly better options for them than tackling the tough issues driving state costs up unnecessarily. After all it's only our hard-earned money. What do they care? They have some serious spending to do.

A letter to University of Kentucky adults.

Dear University of Kentucky Students, Staff, and Vistors:

RE: Your status as a competent, independent adult

This letter is to inform you that in light of recently enacted policies you will soon be treated as children. UK has decided that you are not capable of exercising your rights as a free-thinking, independent, and responsible person. Henceforth, you are not allowed to use tobacco on the university campus. You read that correctly. You cannot use tobacco at all. Anywhere.

Do not be alarmed. This is as far as it goes. This power will never be used to impose further sanctions on your freedoms as adult citizens.

Signs have been posted around campus to remind you that UK is tobacco free and it is now a "healthy place to live, work, and learn." Pay no attention to the underlying implications in the message.

Students, staff, and visitors - you are adults but you are not to be trusted with tobacco.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

Your babysitter and nanny,

University and Government Bureaucrats

Quote of the Day

"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that, if it is comfort or money it values more, it will lose that too."


— William Somerset Maugham [1941]

Does paying teachers more for Master's Degrees make sense?

At first blush, the question above seems almost like nonsense. You would think that teachers with Masters Degrees do a better job with students.

Well, guess again.

A report released about four months ago by the Center on Reinventing Public Education says,

“On average, master’s degrees in education bear no relation to student achievement. Master’s degrees in math and science have been linked to improved student achievement in those subjects, but 90 percent of teachers’ master’s degrees are in education programs—a notoriously unfocused and process-dominated course of study.” (note: reference numbers removed)

The Center’s report goes on to cite the amount of extra money Kentucky pays for those apparently unproductive Master of Education degrees. It comes to a really tidy sum, $143,867,668 every year.

I should note that this problem is well-known in some Kentucky circles. The Kentucky Education Professionals Standards Board will actually cancel approval of all existing Master of Education programs in the state on December 31, 2010. Every college in Kentucky that wants to continue to operate Master of Education programs will have to reapply for a new certification under new guidelines. Hopefully, those guidelines will lead to revised programs that cover what really improves learning for kids.

Quote of the day

"Medicare was 10 times more expensive than first forecast and a part of Medicaid cost 17 times more than taxpayers were led to believe. No wonder the American people do not trust Congress and its supposed forecasting experts."

Andrew Quinlan, president, Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation, in a new report claiming government-run health care will be "a fiscal train wreck."

State bureaucrats: get smart and reduce spending!

A recent article in the Lexington Herald-Leader reports that another cigarette tax being passed in the upcoming Kentucky General Assembly is not likely.  The idea apparently has been tossed around in light of the $161 million shortfall for the current fiscal year.  Avoiding another tobacco tax is a good thing.

Why, you ask?  Because Kentucky doesn't have a revenue problem.  Kentucky has a spending problem.

Here are a few suggestions to trim state spending:

1. Conduct the efficiency study to eliminate wasteful spending that the governor promised during his campaign.  To this date the study has not been done.
2. Repeal prevailing wage legislation.
3. Re-prioritize time within state organizations that spend a lot of their resources keeping tabs on state think tanks.  The Kentucky Department of Education and the Commonwealth of Kentucky Department of Information Systems combine to account for nearly 9% of the traffic at the government transparency site FreedomKentucky.org, sponsored by the Bluegrass Institute.  Even more they combine for nearly 15% of the traffic to this blog!

So, state government, since you're reading this, please put your intelligence gathering to good use and take notes on the above suggestions.

How NOT to improve our schools

– NOT backing up success

Rules for the ‘Race to the Top’ federal education fund are out, and as the first figure shows, there are big points in this state-versus-state competition for states that do things to create and nurture great education leaders.


Thus, the story I’m about to tell should upset many here, and maybe a few in Washington, as well. It’s a story about how Kentucky did nothing to support an education leader who made dramatic improvement in one of our schools.

Read more »

Why I am concerned about real KERA progress – Part 2

I wrote yesterday about how the results from the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress grade 4 math assessment concern me that KERA, 20 years later, isn’t performing nearly as well as we need it to.

Here is how Kentucky stacked up at the eighth grade level on the same assessment. As with the fourth grade example, I look only at white student scores here because about 85 percent of our students are white. It makes sense to examine how the vast majority of our students compare to their peers in other states. This also prevents giving Kentucky an unfair advantage in the comparison against states like California where there has been a huge influx of non-English speaking immigrants in the past few years.

Note that green is NOT GOOD NEWS for Kentucky on this map! States shown in green got math scores for their whites that were statistically significantly higher than our eighth grade whites got.


Note that only one state, West Virginia, did worst than Kentucky, and just six other states statistically tied us.

One of those ties was Mississippi, by the way. As with fourth grade, they caught us in the new NAEP math assessment.

That’s why, I must repeat, as KERA closes in on its 20th anniversary, I am concerned.

Note: Map assembled with the NAEP State Comparisons mapping tool

US Chamber – Kentucky flunks on removing ineffective teachers

The US Chamber of Commerce’s new report, “Leaders and Laggards, A State-by-State Report Card on Education Innovation” takes a dim view of Kentucky’s policies for removing ineffective teachers from the state’s classrooms. The Chamber awarded us an overall grade of “F” for our performance on these teacher policies.

That is no surprise. Kentucky doesn’t even have a formal process to remove the teaching certificates of ineffective teachers.

This figure, derived from data in a table on page 35 of the Chamber report, shows how our principals answered several interesting questions concerning the teacher removal issue.


As you look at the figure, consider that a lower number means the issue is a bigger problem in removing ineffective teachers from our classrooms. The fact that the first four items are relatively big impediments to removing poor performing teachers is no surprise. But, these tend to be even bigger issues here than in other states with better policies.

For example, while only 14 percent of our principals say that tenure does not unduly get in the way of removing poor teachers, across the nation 28 percent said this isn’t an issue.

One statistic cited in the Chamber’s report stuck me as quite interesting. It is the percentage of principals in each state that say teacher removal is not adversely impacted by any difficulty in finding replacements. Here in Kentucky, a very large 72 percent of the principals say that the need to find a replacement teacher isn’t a big factor in the removal process. Apparently, most of our principals believe replacements are available for poor performing teachers.

In Kentucky, even in those relatively rare cases when poor performing teachers somehow wind up leaving one school system, they too often just show up in another school somewhere else in the state. That is due in part to a teacher evaluation system that functions mostly as a rubber stamp rather than a real analysis program that could alert the prospective new school district to the teacher’s true performance.

Why I am concerned about real KERA progress

White students comprise somewhere around 85 percent of Kentucky’s overall school population.

So, if we want to know how the vast majority of our kids compare to their peers in other states, one way to do that is to look at white only scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

This map shows how Kentucky’s white fourth grade students stacked up against whites in other states on the 2009 NAEP math assessment – not well at all! On this map, green is NOT GOOD for Kentucky.


In all those states shown in green – and there are a bunch of them – their white fourth graders definitely outscored ours by a statistically significant amount.

In the eight states shown in tan, their kids statistically tied us.

White fourth grade students in only in two states, West Virginia and Alabama, did more poorly than our kids did.

Even white kids in the notoriously under-performing Washington, DC schools outperformed our kids (Should I mention they have had charters and vouchers there?)!!!

And, Mississippi matched us!

That’s why, as KERA closes in on its 20th anniversary, I am concerned.

Note: Map assembled with the NAEP State Comparisons mapping tool

Read the fine print: There's more than one way to skin this cat

The fine print in the proposed health care bill reveals that this legislation could be dangerous to our health and economic liberty. Perhaps Washington's politicians would know that ... if they had bothered to read it themselves.

Click here to read the latest column from Jim Waters.

Bears repeating – Our own teachers don’t like the way Site-Base Councils run schools

– And, our TEACHERS run the councils!

The new “Leaders and Laggards, A State-by-State Report Card on Education Innovation” report from the US Chamber of Commerce will, as I mentioned earlier, raise some eyebrows.

Here’s one great example that got somewhat hidden in my first post. It bears repeating with emphasis.

After you consider some data in the Chamber’s report, it becomes clear that our School Based Decision Making Councils (SBDM), often called Site-Base Councils, don’t impress Kentucky teachers.

The Chamber cites a federally conducted survey that shows only 31 percent of Kentucky’s teachers like the way our schools are being run. That is less than one teacher in three that thinks their schools are running properly.

That doesn’t even match the national average.


Now, here is the kicker. Our schools are run by the SBDM. Furthermore, by law, teachers form the voting majority on every single SBDM in Kentucky. If our teachers don’t like things, they have the power to change them. But, they clearly are not, or cannot do so.

Thus, the data in the US Chamber’s report leads to a conclusion that the SBDM are not functioning very well, and our own teachers say so.

This insight into the SBDM becomes important as the Race to the Top Fund competition heats up. Kentucky is still trying to argue that SBDM are a suitable replacement for the state’s lack of charter schools.

Well, with an assist from the US Chamber of Commerce, that argument just got shot full of holes – by our own teachers.

Momentum growing for state workers to share some of the economic pain

— Support cutting across political alignments

The Kentucky Chamber of Commerce recently floated a pretty straight-forward idea – with the economy in trouble and the state facing a serious budget shortfall, state workers should pay a bit more each month for their very generous health care program.

Of course, the unions involved had knee-jerk, negative reactions, but that isn’t the way it played out in the press.

I wasn’t surprised to see the conservatively oriented editors at the Paducah Sun come out in favor of the Chamber’s proposal (subscription).

But I was surprised that the Sun was quickly joined in its favorable opinion by the much more liberally oriented folks at the Messenger-Inquirer (subscription).

The public sector unions are clearly getting out of synch with the rest of the state. They are even getting out of line with other unions in the private sector which, seeing the inevitable, have made all sorts of accommodations in order to preserve at least some of their workers’ jobs. Somehow, taking money out of the dwindling numbers of Ford union members’ pockets and transferring it to a public sector employee’s pocket doesn’t seem to do much towards helping the economy.

The chamber is proposing that public sector workers increase their contribution towards health care by just $50 a month. That doesn’t seem like a lot to ask as a contribution to keep the state, and many of those public sector jobs, afloat in this critical time, especially when, as the Messenger-Inquirer notes, Kentucky state worker average salaries now exceed the average salary for all other occupations in Kentucky by more than $1,000.

Quote of the week

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that, if it is comfort or money it values more, it will lose that too.
— William Somerset Maugham [1941]

Keep following that money trail!

Good news!  We've been hard at work collecting check registers in order to shine a light on how money is spent in Kentucky.  This week, many more school district check registers were added to FreedomKentucky.org in the form of PDF documents.  Below is a list of recently added check registers:

Mercer County Schools                                   Simpson County Schools
Lewis County Schools                                     Green County Schools
Nicholas County Schools                                Menifee County Schools
Murray Independent Schools                           Leslie County Schools
Johnson County Schools                                  Pikeville Independent Schools
Fulton County Schools                                    Webster County Schools

These are just some of the most recent school districts to be added.  You can find a complete list of school districts pages here.

Spend a few minutes looking into the school district where you live or your children go to school.  See how taxpayer money is being spent.  After all, spending transparency is the first step toward accountability.

Kentucky fiddles while Massachusetts acts on charter schools

Massachusetts’ legislative leaders, including Gov. Deval Patrick and Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston, are moving swiftly to pass a charter school bill to better position the Bay State for a chunk of the more than $4 billion in education stimulus funding being offered by the Obama administration to states pursuing innovative changes in their public education systems.

Kentucky officials say site-based councils are good enough and performance is good enough. Just send money.

The Massachusetts process has been rife with controversy over funding and the loss of local control, with resistance led by superintendents, school committees and teachers unions.

Oh my, controversy! In Kentucky, that means time for talk, talk, talk and then a multi-year task force. Elected officials certainly can’t rock the comfort boat of special interests.

“I think it’s important to pass the bill not only to qualify for the race-to-the-top funds, but because it is the right thing for our children,’’ said Martha M. Walz, cochairwoman of the Joint Committee on Education. “The bill focuses on two things: closing the achievement gap in those schools and communities where some children are lagging behind, and for communities doing well, it creates a method for them to do even better.’’

Wow, putting kids first! What a novel approach! Kentuckians can’t even get their legislators to muster enough courage to discuss charter schools in an education committee.

As the world passes Kentucky by, at least we can watch real leaders in other states find a way to get the job done and put their children’s education first.

Race to the Top rules are trickling out – Finally

After a great deal of anticipation, the final rules for states to compete for over $4 billion in federal Race to the Top stimulus money are finally coming out.

Education Week reports (subscription) that Kentucky will start out of the blocks at up to a 32 point disadvantage in this high stakes competition due to our lack of charter schools.

Shockers from new US Chamber of Commerce report

I wrote yesterday about a new report from the US Chamber of Commerce that will raise eyebrows about what is, and isn’t, happening in our schools.

Let’s take a deeper look at some of the interesting data in that report. First up are some real shockers.

Here are the results from an opinion poll called the Schools and Staffing Survey which the National Center for Education Statistics distributes to schools around the country every four years. The graph shows how our teachers feel about paperwork getting in the way of instruction and about how well their schools are being run.


This data comes from a table on page 18 of the Chamber report.

Clearly, only a very small minority of our teachers don’t feel burdened by paperwork. Looked at the other way, 92 percent of our teachers think that paperwork is interfering with teaching.

That may indicate that there is too much paperwork, but it also might indicate that teachers don’t understand the value of the paperwork they need to complete – probably because they don’t know how to use the results effectively.

Either way, there is a huge problem with the paperwork requirement. In fact, teachers in only 10 other states are even more upset about paperwork requirements than our Kentucky teachers are.

There is also a crisis of teacher confidence in the way Kentucky’s schools are being run. Fewer than one in three teachers is happy about their school’s management.

This is an astonishing revelation.

Kentucky teachers directly control school management through their domination of the School Based Decision Making Councils.

Something here is terribly wrong if teachers don’t like the way they themselves are running the show. If they are unhappy, they are doing it to themselves.

US Chamber’s new Ed report will raise eyebrows

The US Chamber of Commerce just issued a new report, “LEADERS and LAGGARDS, A State-by-State Report Card on Educational Innovation.”

It takes a new approach to evaluating education in the 50 states using a number of statistics that have not been part of earlier discussions.

And, to be sure, the new report is going to create lots of discussion with its various findings, which include:

Rigid education bureaucracies impede quality schooling

State finance systems are opaque, inefficient, and undermine innovation

The teacher pipeline fails to provide a diverse pool of high-quality educators

Teacher evaluations are not based on performance

Major barriers exist to the removal of poor-performing teachers

The outcome of state technology spending is unknown

State data systems provide limited information on school operations and outcomes

Schools provide too little access to college-level coursework

Only one state, Hawaii, has created a student-based funding system

States lack a culture of education advocacy

It’s not so much that the findings are new surprises; in fact, we’ve been saying a lot of the same sorts of things for years.

But, in the past it was unusual for “main line” organizations to be so blunt and outspoken about these problems. Now, the US Chamber has opened the door wide.

Stay tuned for more, as the report cites some really interesting data for Kentucky.

Mean spirits in Fayette County Schools?

It started with an administrative complaint to the Kentucky Department of Education filed by the Children’s Law Center, a non-profit in Lexington, on behalf of 12 students.

Those students claimed they were denied special education services by the Fayette County School District. The complaint also contended that the district systematically does not identify students who need such services.

The Kentucky Department of Education issued its report on the complaint in September, finding that the school district did violate various regulations regarding seven of the students. The report said the district needed to provide services to some of the students and corrective training to staff members.

Now, the Lexington Herald-Leader reports, the district is taking this way beyond the next level, suing both the Kentucky Commissioner of Education and, incredibly, the Children’s Law Center.

At first blush, that comes across like suing a lawyer just for taking on a client’s case.

I’m sure there is more to this story, and it will be interesting to see how this develops.

Certainly, if the district prevails, it will cast a pall on every other parent of a learning disabled child in this state who isn’t getting the services needed.

Thanks to our veterans

Today is a day to express appreciation to our nation's 23.2 million veterans. It's also a day to remember those who gave the ultimate sacrifice and paid freedom's highest price.

Without the service provided by those men and women willing to serve in our nation's armed forces, the security required for a free marketplace to thrive would not be possible.

Libertarians need to show strong support for the armed forces, realizing that those who serve do so by choice and ensure the continuation of the those ideals and principles that make this country strong.

Here are the nation's veterans ... "by the numbers."

A bullseye on campus housing.

More drama with campus area housing. Circuit Judge Ernesto Scorsone issued an injunction against a Woodland Avenue property owner for operating a house as a lodging house in Lexington. This forced 10 University of Kentucky students out of their home.

Granted, the home was inspected and not up to code.

Question: Where else in the city are private property owners in a single area being targeted for inspection?
Answer: Nowhere.

Is it fair to target property owners in one small area of town and hold them to a set of standards that the city itself cannot/will not meet?

This video just keeps rearing it's ugly head...

When you aim low, you often hit your own foot

– Jefferson County – you did it to yourself

We have written plenty over the years (such as here and here) about the “lowball” reading performance target the Jefferson County Public School System set for itself several years ago with its “Every1Reads” program.

The district took it upon itself to change the Kentucky Board of Education’s real reading performance target in the CATS assessments to something much lower – apparently just to look better.

Just after his appointment as superintendent in Jefferson County, I took time to personally caution Dr. Sheldon Berman that Every1Reads set deceptive targets that would lead to trouble.

Those cautions didn’t work, and the district’s reading program is now in trouble.

Read more »

Speak out on how your money is spent!

Over the summer The Bluegrass Institute's FreedomKentucky.org project began an initiative to conduct numerous open records requests to obtain check registers, financial data, and budgets for Kentucky school districts, cities, and state agencies. Those results are slowly being archived in a sortable format so that you can see how your money is being spent! You can find a link to this database on the front page of FreedomKentucky.org listed as "State Spending Database".

A new feature is available that allows for anyone browsing these databases to leave comments about what they find in these check registers! Find a questionable expense? Leave a comment about it, help raise awareness about how taxpayer money is being spent in Kentucky.

Browse the database to find your school district, city, or a state agency you are interested in!

Sobering statistic about Kentucky’s young adults

“75 percent of young people ages 17 to 24 are unable to enlist in the military because they fail to graduate high school, have a criminal record, or are physically unfit. In Kentucky, that would mean over 300,000 young adults cannot join. However, that may be a low estimate because, compared to the national average, Kentucky has more young people who are overweight, (37% vs. 32%).”

This shocking claim comes from a new group called “Mission Readiness: Military Leaders for Kids.”

The group has some interesting political overtones (at least one of the generals involved became highly political following military retirement), but the magnitude of the statistics this group quotes are truly incredible none-the-less.

Read more »

News about private schools you can use

With a ‘hat tip’ to Richard Day, who discovered this Washington Post article, it turns out the National Center for Education Statistics’ Institute of Education Studies has a neat, searchable database on private schools that includes 22 pages of data on private schools from Pre K to grade 12 in Kentucky.

Find the IES Web site here.

Note that you can do more limited searches or just enter Kentucky and leave all the other fields blank to see the full listing of private schools. If you are looking for a school for your child, you can do a county by county or city by city search. They also allow searches by religious affiliation among other things.

Read more »

Fair is fair

Strive Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky is an effort to improve education, and they have been doing some interesting things.

Still, fair is fair, and Strive put up this post which is very easily misinterpreted. It shows the percentages of Ohio and Kentucky ACT college entrance test takers who met ACT college readiness Benchmark Scores by intended majors such as management, education and health care.

The problem is that the data is for 2009 high school graduates, and while Kentucky tested 100% of our grads with the ACT, in Ohio only 64% took this college entrance test. Thus, Strive’s showing of two graphs right above and below each other invites highly inappropriate comparisons.

In fact, Strive really needs to explain that a rather small proportion of the Ohio graduates took the ACT just to provide necessary data to interpret the Ohio graph by itself.

Anyway, while Ohio used to outscore us on the ACT, fair comparisons are not nearly as easy to do today as the Strive blog item implies.

The Bluegrass Institute strongly favors 100% ACT testing, by the way. Ohio really ought to try it.

Still more 'get' the push for charter schools in Kentucky

A new editorial in the Lexington Herald-Leader shows more people are getting the message that charter schools might help with our chronically low performing schools. It’s one approach that hasn’t been tried here before (charter schools are not legal in Kentucky) that is starting to show success elsewhere when the charters are properly set up and managed.

It’s also interesting to note that the Herald-Leader understands that, “Kentucky law has strong language authorizing state intervention in failing schools. But the state has never put much muscle behind the words.”

That’s not really correct.

Back in the 1990’s the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) did take over the Floyd County School system. They sent in Distinguished Educators (now called Highly Skilled Educators) and tried all sorts of Progressive Education fad ideas that were constantly being pushed during the early days of KERA.

Problem was: it didn’t work out too well. The KDE showed it didn’t run schools very well.

Schools should run schools, not bureaucrats from Frankfort.

That is one reason why the charter school idea is so appealing. Frankfort would not run them, the new school staff brought on board does, overseen by a local group that holds the school charter. Done right, those local charter schools would make progress without the sort of interference from Frankfort that history showed didn’t work in Floyd County.

Great coverage of upcoming Rally

The Louisville Examiner had great coverage of the upcoming rally where Virginia Walden Ford will speak at 7 p.m. on Nov. 6 in the multipurpose facility at Midwest Church of Christ, 2115 Garland Ave., between S 22nd St. and Dr. WJ Hodge St. – just off Dixie Highway on Garland Ave.

Kentucky's elected officials can still blaze a trail

Talk talks, walk talks, walk talks louder than talk talks!

President Obama made the right statements.

Everything he committed to do IS important. He said the right words. Everything he committed to do IS in his control.

Our Kentucky elected officials will soon come together to address Kentucky’s significant budget and policy challenges. Let’s hope they have the courage to follow through on these type of commitments for Kentuckians and the blaze the trail to do the right things the right way.

The process IS all in their control.

A mother's story sends message for school choice

Virginia Walden Ford is an example of what challenging the system can do for your children's education and future. One mother can make a difference. Hear Walden Ford this morning at 11 a.m. (eastern)/10 a.m. (central) on The Francene Show on Louisville's 84WHAS. Listen in at www.whas.com.

Click here to read the latest Bluegrass Beacon column.

State taxes and economic recessions

Is another depression at the end of the current path littered with higher taxes and increased spending by government?

Click here to listen to the 90-second audio commentary.

‘Race to the Top’ Education Money could indeed push charter schools for Kentucky

There has been a lot of “yes it will, no it won’t” discussion about whether the final rules for the federal ‘Race To The Top’ second tier stimulus money would require charter schools in Kentucky.

Even as the final rule release grows close (perhaps this week), it looks like the Kentucky Department of Education isn’t really sure what the wording will look like, but according to the Lexington Herald-Leader, David Cook, the state department of education's guru for ‘Race To The Top,’ says that if we want the money, we may have to implement charters, or something like them, at least in our lowest performing schools.

Read more »

Well Done!

Unfortunately, in the past there has been hostility towards our men and women in uniform in some pubic schools around the nation.

But, that isn’t the case in the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer’s reader area. This recent article (subscription) lists a host of activities that are scheduled in Owensboro area schools to honor veterans as Veterans Day approaches.

To that, we can only add our thanks to the many Kentucky vets who served us all proudly and add a “Well Done!” for the area schools that are helping their students learn more about those sacrifices.

'Revolutionary' idea: Markets, not governments, should determine smoking policies

Nonsmoker Jim Waters, director of policy and communications for the Bluegrass Institute, Kentucky's free-market think tank, will debate government-imposed smoking bans on Western Kentucky University's Revolution 91.7, WWHR-FM, on Tuesday at 7:15 (EST)/6:15 p.m. (CST).

Waters' opponent will be smoker Will Doolin, a junior majoring in broadcasting with a minor in meteorology.The 15-minute program is the first of several weekly on-air policy debates hosted by Sylvia Horlander, a junior nonsmoker majoring in broadcast news and political science. Future shows will feature debates concerning current events, including health care and gun control.

Let's hope there will be more of these types of programs that allow free-market viewpoints to gain a fair hearing among much of the leftist/politically correct blather emanating from university campuses on a regular basis.

Schools finally cooperating with WKU to boost college readiness

The good news about Senate Bill 1 – which threw out our CATS assessments and told the public school folks to start working with college folks to develop a better curriculum – is that things are actually happening.

The Bowling Green Daily News reports that Western Kentucky University (WKU) is teaming up with the 33 school districts in its region to develop better means of educating students in our Primary to grade 12 schools so they will be ready for college.

Clearly, the need to do something is very serious. The newspaper reports that “only 62 percent of students entering WKU in fall 2007 were college-ready.”

And, make no mistake, this is something new for Western Kentucky. The newspaper further reports, “Bowling Green Independent Schools Superintendent Joe Tinius said while it would be a natural assumption that the city schools would be closely linked to what is going on at WKU, that has not been the case.”

In other words, until Senate Bill 1 came along, even the upscale independent school district right in WKU’s home town really wasn’t talking to the college about the inadequate preparation level of its students.

I know that a similar effort has been going on in Northern Kentucky for some time, but let’s hope the other regions of the state get on board with the northern region and WKU’s area to really start primary-secondary school to postsecondary school collaboration. It’s long overdue.