Kentucky didn’t impress RTTT Phase 2 judges

Data is now starting to emerge from the US Department of Education about the Race to the Top Phase 2 competition.

Bluntly put, Kentucky's self-'marketing' didn’t impress the final judges.

A summary of the Phase 2 scores along with the similar summary from the Phase 1 competition and the US Secretary of Education’s RTTT news release show the following:


I got a chance to ask an education expert about the RTTT results. Penny Sanders, who was the first head of the Kentucky Office of Education Accountability, more recently has been doing lots of work in Florida.

Says Dr. Sanders, “Florida has done an excellent job of linking classroom instruction to the state’s assessment and accountability system.” Sanders continued, “Furthermore, Florida has a system of alternatives so students can leave failing schools. Therefore, I am not surprised Florida did well.”

After all the glowing comments Kentucky heard earlier this week in the governor's TEK Task Force Forum about our “nation-leading” education system, the stark reality in the news from Washington is that people outside our state are not buying it.

Says Bluegrass Institute President Rick Loghry, “The first step towards failure is when you start to believe your own marketing.”

For the sake of the state’s children, it looks like Kentucky’s educators and leaders better retrace some of those first, fateful steps towards believing our own 'marketing' really fast.