Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Kentucky Representative Darryl Owens upset about Ed Commissioner’s comment

Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday got some criticism yesterday for making statements that all schools with diversity will fail No Child Left Behind by 2014.

I like a lot of things Commissioner Holliday is doing, but given the big loopholes like confidence intervals, busing, etc, etc, in No Child Left Behind, it is at best premature to say no school with diversity will be able to escape sanctions in 2014.

Also, the facts are that a lot of Kentucky schools can’t meet the relatively low performance targets in our current Kentucky Core Content Tests, and they are doing a very bad job of getting kids ready for life. Many currently deserve to be identified as problematic when the proportions of kids scoring at or above benchmarks statewide for the EXPLORE, PLAN, and ACT tests – tests which are tied to what kids need next – remain low.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

When you have a government public school bureaucracy getting standards set by unaccountable government bureaucrats, you have the perfect approach for poor performance. The results of the busing loopholes in Jefferson County only show that pubic school funds will continue to reward failure. Its time to set tough learning expectations and put teeth to meeting those expectations within 2 years.

Richard Innes said...

RE: slol1's Comment

There has indeed been a history of the bureaucracy setting low standards and even then failing to achieve them (e.g. using our watered down Kentucky Core Content Tests for NCLB).

I hope people get your message, slol1.

Liberty General said...

We saw this in the beginning of NCLB, didn't we? Kentucky took advantage of being allowed to set its own path to proficiency by 2014by setting the bar extremely low in the early years of NCLB. This was a political decision as the educrats hoped a liberal administration would get rid of NCLB before they would be required to reach proficiency. That hasn't happened, and it's exposing a huge gap between where Kentucky's educaiton system is, and where it should be.