Taxpayers win as state policy “research” center sunsets

The Kentucky Long Term Policy Research Center (KLTPRC) closed its doors for the last time today. All of its funding was cut in the new state budget that goes into effect tomorrow.

While I fully appreciate the desirability of well done and insightful policy studies, it’s no secret that I have been highly critical of one set of KLTPRC reports on education. Those rank all the states on a KLTPRC-contrived ‘Education Index.’ Aside from providing a very dubious ranking system, this work basically duplicates effort that should, and does, come from another legislative agency, the Kentucky Office of Education Accountability (OEA). OEA has more resources and talent in this area and didn’t need the attempted upstaging by the KLTPRC.

Thus, at least in the education area, it looks like the KLTPRC’s demise is a win for the taxpayer.

Read more »

Jim Waters to speak at Bullitt County Tea Party

Jim Waters will be speaking at the Bullitt County Tea Party Thursday, July 1, 2010 at 6pm at First Street Park across from the courthouse in Shepherdsville. A chance for all citizens to have a voice for freedom and independence.

Interview With A Zombie

A zombie sits down to interview Tom Woods on Tom's latest book, "Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century."

It's that time...Wednesday links!

1. "School Choice in the Land of Stalin's Birth" Wow.  The title on this CafeHayek blog was enough to pull me in... Perhaps some folks here in Kentucky should take some notes.
2. Superintendent Reviews - So if you haven't checked these out yet, you should.  They are scary.  Like this one for example in a school district who has failed to make adequate yearly progress for 7 consecutive years!
3. Hot Water? - Perhaps the title of this Herald-Leader article should have read "Biden defends stimulus in hot water". I can think of more useful things for a vice-president of the United States to do other than traveling around to continue to sell something that isn't working.

Failure to communicate

Politicians are not sent to Washington or Frankfort to solve our problems. Rather, we elect lawmakers to protect our liberty so we can solve our own problems.

Click here to listen to the 90-second commentary.

Will Kentucky’s math instruction return to the rain forest?

As Kentucky educators work to revise the state’s mathematics standards in compliance with Senate Bill 1 from the 2009 Regular Legislative Session, I can’t help but be concerned that some of the same mistakes our educators made with math instruction in the first decade of KERA might still come back to haunt us.

In line with trying to avoid making the same mistakes twice, I suggest that those educators working on our new math standards should review comments made by Senator Robert Byrd in the June 9, 1997 Congressional Record. Find a copy of those remarks here.

Senator Byrd lamented the lack of progress in math instruction in the United States during the 1990s and offered up some reasons why that might have occurred.

Our educators need to read his very pertinent comments about a “whacko algebra” text, “Secondary Math: An Integrated Approach: Focus on Algebra,” and why it “really was not an algebra textbook at all.”

This textbook came to national attention after professor of economics Marianne Jennings characterized it as a “rain forest math” textbook. I heard Jennings describe the book in a conference many years ago, and she outlined the major problems with amazing insight and wisdom.

Sadly, since Byrd and Jennings offered their warnings, we have now sacrificed another generation of kids to poorly conceived math instruction because the education world refused to listen. Kentucky’s abysmal white eighth grade math proficiency rate of only 29 percent and black proficiency rate of a truly disastrous eight percent (no, this is not a typo) in the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress bear grim testimony to that.

Unfortunately, many of today’s math educators grew up in or were influenced by the “rain forest math” world that concerned Senator Byrd. Thus, we’ll need to pay attention as the new math program required by Senate Bill 1 rolls out. Hopefully, more than 13 years after Senator Byrd made his comments, someone in the education community is finally listening.

Even though some charter schools might close, they are not losing popularity in Ohio

The Columbus Dispatch reports that 31 charter schools in Ohio might be ordered to close after Ohio test results are released in August.

But, there is no indication that Ohioan’s are losing enthusiasm for the innovative school choice model of charter schools.

In fact, the same Dispatch article says that as many as 41 new charter school applications are currently under consideration despite the fact that some of the 300 plus charter schools in the state may soon be shut down.

In reality, the situation in Ohio reemphasizes some things we have said all along about charter schools.

First of all, it is clear that some charter schools such as those we have often highlighted in this blog are doing a great job for students. Ohioans know that. This is why the Buckeye State is planning to move forward with more charters at the same time some may have to be closed.

For another thing, unlike typical public schools, which are all we have in Kentucky, when a charter public school doesn’t measure up, it faces appropriate consequences.

Monday Links!

Here's your daily dose of links!

• Over on Cafe Hayek, Don Boudreaux offers the other side of the coin on oil...This is a refreshing letter to the Washington Post.
• Does this even count as a school district superintendent review!? I had much more intense and involved reviews when I working in the service industry...Oh wait, that's because private industry has to turn a profit...
• A 2nd Amendment victory.

The latest on the 2010 Open Records project

Visit the 2010 Open Records Project page on FreedomKentucky.org to see the most recent requests that have been made.  Of note...

• Requests have been made of cabinets to see obtain information related to their budgeting process
• A page has been created under the "Education" section of the 2010 Open Records portal that lists all the school districts who have responded to the superintendent review request.  There are a lot of surprises in there, check and see if your school district is represented!

Stay tuned, there is much more to come!

Jim Waters on Independence Day

Recorded two years ago and just as relevant now.

Watch out, Jefferson County!

You're about to get mislead with NAEP Reading data

I wrote back in May and earlier about the recent release of the Trial Urban District Assessment results for 2009 from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Jefferson County took part in this for the first time in 2009.

At that time, I cautioned that Jefferson County schools cannot be fairly compared to typical inner city school systems in this country because the student demographics in Jefferson County are not close to similar to real inner city school districts.

I used this graph to help make that point (click on graph to enlarge).


It shows that the racial makeup of Jefferson County is nothing like that in other urban school districts that took part in the NAEP Trial Urban District Assessments.

Now, the National Center for Education Statistics has released one-page “Snapshots” of the results from the reading assessment. As soon as I heard about them, I suspected these snapshots would be simplistic summaries that would totally ignore the serious problem of demographics.

I was right. The Snapshots are incomplete and can be misleading.

To learn more, click the “Read more” link below

Read more »

The way it used to be is not the way it is or must become

Without change there is no change. It's business as usual in Washington, where the Obama administration is using raw power to push support to unions at every opportunity and in every way possible.

However, there is a limit on what people can pay to support such political nonsense.

In Kentucky, our leaders are on a spending binge and much of it is to satisfy, or at least pacify, the politically influential labor unions. But considering our economy has tanked, how long can Kentucky's policymakers keep their heads in the sand? Even the United Auto Workers can no longer remain in denial:

Per the Detroit News:

- THE PAST: Union members received a slight wage premium over counterparts at Toyota in Kentucky or Honda in Ohio. Their benefits were better, their pensions richer and all of it contributed to the financial stranglehold on Detroit's automakers.

- REALITY NOW: New hires will be paid roughly half what the veterans now get. Defined-benefit pensions will be replaced with defined-contribution 401(k) plans. Active members pay more for their health care, and so do the legions of retirees.

"The best contract in the world doesn't mean anything if you don't have a job," said Ron Gettelfinger, UAW's president who led during these tough conversions.

Leaders in Washington and Frankfort can't correlate that support to what happened in Detroit. They can only encourage and promise the "way it used to be." It's pure nonsense.

Kentucky's going to have to make some tough conversions, too, involving crucial issues: prevailing wage, ability to place teachers where they can make the biggest impact, out of control state worker defined benefit pension and insurance costs and a bloated state government.

When the federal government can't print enough money to subsidize Kentucky's spending binge or bonding capacity peaks and more taxes just kill jobs, "the way it used to be" just won't be good enough anymore.

Not even the Great Recession slows the growth of gov't employment numbers

A reasonable assumption is that a slowdown in the nation's economy would also slow the growth of government employment -- especially with the nearly double-digit national jobless rate and the even-higher 10.4 percent unemployment rate in Kentucky.

But "government" and "reasonable" offer the epitome of an oxymoron these days.



So not only are individuals losing their source of income for their families, taxpayers are being forced to shell out even more to ensure the continuation of a government whose policies have greatly contributed to our nation's current financial funk.

Of course, more workers are needed to effectively carry out the barrage of new taxes, regulations and government mandates headed our way.

Michiganders see through teachers' union bluster

No, it’s not about the kids; it’s about adults in the system.

A Detroit News blog exposes the problem very nicely.

Furthermore, the blogger points out an outstanding example of how privatizing custodial services saved a Michigan school district big money as expenses dropped from $17–20 per hour to $9-10 per hour. Instead of the district’s schools being cleaned only every other day, they now get daily cleaning. In addition, the district will save $5 million over the next five years.

Somehow, the Michigan Education Association even tried to make this out as something bad for schools.

'Card check' or paychecks: You decide

Labor unions covet government edicts that will reverse the trend of falling union membership and declining dues.

Click here to read the latest Bluegrass Beacon.

Study of college summer reading list creates stir

It looks like summer is already heating up for the college bound.

Fox News says that a new report from The National Association of Scholars (NAS) is creating lots of discussion about the books incoming college freshmen have been asked to read before reporting to the campus this fall.

The NAS study says:

“We found the preponderance of reading assignments promotes liberal social causes and liberal sensibilities. Of the 180 books, 126 (70 percent) either explicitly promote a liberal political agenda or advance a liberal interpretation of events. By contrast, the study identifies only three books (less than 2 percent) that promote a conservative sensibility and none that promote conservative political causes. 51 books (28 percent) are neither liberal nor conservative.”

Right or wrong, those are fighting words. So, it will be interesting to see how this early “summer heat” situation plays out as more becomes known about the books and the reactions of those fledgling college students to their reading assignments.

By the way, three Kentucky schools are listed in the study. Click the Read More link below to learn about the books they want incoming freshmen to read.

Read more »

Dems get kudos for returning special-session pay

Kudos to Democrats Jim Wayne of Louisville and Melvin Henley of Murray for returning to the state treasury more than $2,500 in wages they received for this year's special legislative session.

In the private sector, if work doesn't get done on time there are consequences. In the public sector, Frankfort's politicians too often benefit from a policy of procrastination.

How many other lawmakers will follow Wayne's and Henley's example? Taxpayers are watching.

H-L op-ed challenges faulty research about charter schools

In my latest Lexington Herald-Leader op-ed, which was published Monday, I challenge faulty research about charter schools and Kentucky's teachers union that uses it to deny Kentucky parents the option of sending their children to charter schools.

Five years ago today: Kelo v. City of New London

Five years ago today, the Supreme Court ruled in its Kelo decision that government could seize private property through eminent domain and hand it off to another private entity for their own gain and that of elected politicians.

Teachers don't know key part of their jobs?

To anyone who knows anything about education, it’s a stunning comment. Education Commissioner Terry Holliday said in Bowling Green that:


“Teachers don’t know how to develop good assessments. And the huge thing is that they don’t know what to do with the information to change instruction.”

Wow!



When the US Air Force checked me out in 1971 to program the first generation of teaching technology machines ever used for operational pilot training, one of the first things I learned was the vital importance of assessment in real education. Very simply, good teachers must constantly evaluate where the student is in the learning process so that future teaching can be adjusted to meet the student’s needs.

Without continuous assessment of student progress, teachers are left clueless about how their instruction is working for students.

So, here we are after 20 years of KERA, and our commissioner of education says our teachers don’t know some of the most important things about teaching. That is indeed a “huge thing.”

Focus on Kids' Futures, Not Adult Comfort

I’ve written plenty in the past few months about Kentucky’s 10 Persistently Low-Achieving Schools and how some adults in the system seem to be in denial that there is anything really wrong in their schools. Just search the blog with the keyword phrase “Low-Achieving School” to find that.

Some of those whining educators have friends in the legislature. So it was inevitable. When Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday provided an update briefing on June 14, 2010 to the legislature’s Interim Joint Committee on Education on what is happening in those 10 schools, he got pushback from those legislators who always seem quick to defend the schools against all.

During that legislative exercise, several legislators made comments that could have been interpreted to be mostly just excuses for continuing to do nothing with the staff in our failing schools.

For example, Rep. Charles Miller, D-Louisville, embarked on a rambling discussion of all the reasons why he questioned the process that was going to lead to replacement of teachers and principals in his district.

At one point, Miller made this interesting comment:

“You need to have discipline in a school before you can teach, and we’re not – actually that’s not one of our main focuses. We’re saying let’s replace the principal.”

Miller’s implication was that someone other than the principal is responsible for discipline in the school, so replacing a principal doesn’t address the discipline issue.

Is Miller right? Who is supposed to maintain discipline in a school?

The (obvious) answer is found on page 5 in the Kentucky Department of Education’s STUDENT DISCIPLINE GUIDELINES 2008. This is a statutorily required document under KRS 158.148.

Regarding each district’s code of acceptable behavior and discipline, the STUDENT DISCIPLINE GUIDELINES 2008 says:

“…each school principal shall be responsible for administration and implementation within each school.”

So, Miller’s rambling didn’t expose anything wrong on Holliday’s part. Instead, it just provided more ammunition that a lot of people involved in the education process (Miller is a retired principal) are simply in denial that we have come to the point where some tough, but badly needed accountability finally must be implemented. Some of those people in denial don’t seem to have a very good handle on what is really going on, but they are spouting off, anyway.

By the way, a few days ago Commissioner Holliday put out a rather outstanding discussion concerning his experience during the Interim Joint Education Committee meeting. I think he hit the nail squarely on the head in this letter, and I strongly encourage reading it. You see, as the commissioner writes, it’s time to “Focus on Kids’ Futures, Not Adult Comfort.”

Commissioner wants to shake up education in Kentucky

“We won’t be able to change education in Kentucky without some type of disruptive innovation.”

Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday speaking to the Kentucky Association of School Superintendents in Bowling Green

The commissioner went on to explain part of the motivation for such a shakeup is to do a better job for minority and low-income children. He wants better teaching tools to reach autistic students and others with learning disabilities and who pose major discipline problems.

Holliday is pushing local school districts to request waivers from existing regulations that create roadblocks to innovation.

One major area of concern is the large number of lost school days due to bad weather. Holliday thinks new technology tools could help a lot with this problem that has disrupted instruction in many Kentucky schools over the past two years.

Apparently unmentioned, however, was perhaps the most important roadblock to superintendents making change – Kentucky’s awkward School Based Decision Making Council (SBDM) laws.

Holliday can push superintendents all he wants, but as long as the real decisions about what happens in schools are out of superintendent control (which is the case thanks to the SBDM law), local school districts can’t “disrupt” much of anything wrong in our public schools. If we are going to have real change, the SBDM program is where it will have to start.

And, if the commissioner really wants innovation laboratories, some of the best models we have seen are found in charter schools. We need a law to allow Kentucky to set up such education laboratories, because the commissioner definitely has some things right. After 20 years of KERA, the commissioner knows too many of our public schools still are not working for minorities, the poor, and students with learning disabilities.

Politicians fiddle while Kentucky's economy burns

This year’s special session of the Kentucky General Assembly was a costly, unnecessary exercise.

Click here to read the latest Shine The Light.

Teachers' union going too far in Indiana

The Education Action Group's Ed Reform Radar highlights an egregious example of a teachers' union gone wild, trying to bypass the decision of the voters in Anderson, Indiana.

This story shows how excessive teacher union control of local school boards can get out of hand in a hurry even if voters want a change.

You might also want to read the other article in the Ed Reform Radar. It talks about teachers in New Jersey more or less turning their students into child labor to help keep teacher salaries at high levels.

'Card check' on Kentuckiana Grassroots Radio tonight

The newest Bluegrass Beacon column -- released to newspapers on Thursday and which will be posted Friday on our Web site -- addresses the consequences of a proposed "card check" law.

I recently interviewed former Bush adviser and Kentucky native Scott Jennings, state director of the Coalition to Protect Kentucky Jobs, while guest hosting on the Les Naiman Show on WGTK-AM 970. The coalition is a project committed to stopping "card check" -- Big Labor's attempt to use government to increase its membership, which means more dues monies for political activity.

If passed, workers would be denied the sacred American tradition of a secret ballot when voting on whether to organize a labor union in their workplace. Other consequences include the fact that up to 600,000 jobs could be lost in the second year following passage of such a bill.

Jennings will be discussing the issue and taking your calls live at (347) 637-3086 on Louisville's Kentuckiana Grassroots Radio tonight at 6:30 p.m.

More on school district legal spending

Last week I wrote about some seemingly questionable and excessive spending on legal services by Grant County Schools.

This behavior seems to be the new "in fashion" for school districts.  For example...

We have noticed a high number of districts who use legal representation to reply to simple open records requests.  I think we all know that legal representation isn't always cheap.  The services obtained by school districts are no different. Last year we did a records request to obtain Laurel County Schools check register.  So when we received a letter responding to the request for the superintendent's performance review from the district's attorney, we searched our database and found out how much they spent with this attorney in fiscal year 2009...

That's a lot of money.  Now, granted, an organization the size of a school district is bound to employ attorneys at some point but isn't it a bit excessive to be paying an attorney thousands of dollars a month to respond to records requests when the request could easily be filled in-house?

Oh, I forgot to mention - This attorney also represents the Pulaski Board of Education. 

Is this a good use of tax-payer money?

Insight into Prichard's high performing, high-poverty schools

The Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence and the Bluegrass Institute generally agree. Some Kentucky schools do a good job for students despite high poverty rates.

However, when it comes to measuring that performance, we have our differences.

Over at Prichard, they cooked up a “Transition Index” that attempts to carry on tradition with the remaining Kentucky Core Content Tests from the now defunct CATS. Prichard just used their contrived index to identify “high performance, high-poverty schools.”

Here at the institute, we prefer to look at more solid test results when possible. Thanks to Senate Bill 130 from the 2006 regular legislative session, we now have such data for our middle and high schools.

So, when Prichard posted a list of “high performance, high-poverty schools,” I decided to see what happened when I looked at the PLAN (grade 10) and EXPLORE (grade 8) results for those schools.

I went further, looking at the four-year trend in the PLAN and EXPLORE, as well as the year-by-year scores.

These two tables summarize what I found. First is the EXPLORE data. The “slope of the regression” column shows results from a standard statistical process that looks at data and then finds the best fit straight line approximation. A positive slope means overall the trend is increasing, and the larger the slope, the faster the rate of increase.

(Click on table to enlarge)

Note that in 2008-09, the year Prichard used for its study, two schools, South Floyd Middle and Wallins Elementary School, didn’t even achieve state average EXPLORE Composite Scores.

Also, over the four-year period, the schools with slope of the regression and the rank (which is for that slope of the regression) highlighted in pink didn’t place in the “top 25 percent,” either.

One school, the Kimper Elementary School, was way out of the top running for its trend in scores.

Of course, Prichard only looked at one year of data, for 2009, while the analysis above is much more extensive and considers four years of data. The lesson there is that you can miss a lot if you only look at a point in time when analyzing a school.

Here is the table for the high school PLAN results.

(Click on table to enlarge)

Once again, some of Prichard’s schools do well in this trend analysis, but not all do.

Worse, in 2008-09 four of Prichard’s seven high schools scored below state average on the PLAN Composite. Whatever these schools are teaching, it may create impressive KCCT scores, but it does not look like the schools are doing a good job of getting kids ready for postsecondary education.

The good news here is that some of the schools in both lists do a good job across the board for their kids. They are getting them better prepared than other state schools for postsecondary education. The caution is that simplistic evaluation of a single year of data from a test series that is being phased out isn’t exactly the best way to find those schools.

EXPLORE and PLAN averages are available here.

Caroline Hoxby on why charter schools close

It was never intended that all charter schools would be successful. As charter school expert Caroline Hoxby points out, the charter concept anticipated that some of the imaginative models adopted in individual schools would not work out for kids.



According to the Center for Education Reform’s Annual Survey of America’s Charter Schools (requires free registration), as of the 2009-10 school term, 742 charter schools had closed, but 5,042 were operating. So, of the 5,784 charter schools that were opened in the US, about 13 percent were closed. Most of those closed because they ran into fiscal problems.

In comparison, in Kentucky no regular public school has been closed, to my knowledge, due to poor performance.

Cheating on tests cheats kids

The New York Times gets it right on this one.

School apologists frequently whine that high stakes testing pushes teachers to cheat. But the Times doesn’t buy that nonsense, saying:

“Groups that dislike standardized tests — and teacher accountability systems based on them — are blaming both for the cheating problem. But that’s like blaming the biopsy that turns up evidence of serious disease.”

Teachers who cheat on state tests ultimately cheat the kids, and those who do it deserve to be barred from the nation’s classrooms.

Politicians 'Neal' at the altar of hollow civil rights rhetoric

The Declaration of Independence confirms that ''all men are created equal.'' But those are nothing but virtuous words for thousands of Kentucky's public-school students being left behind in the American ''pursuit of happiness.''

Click here to read the latest Bluegrass Beacon.

Newsweek ranking for Kentucky high school is ridiculous

Newsweek’s annual excursion into the statistical nonsense of ranking the nation’s high schools is out, and the big joke on everyone is that the Holmes Junior/Senior High School in Covington, Kentucky is ranked at 927 out of the thousands of high schools in the United States.

Here are a few facts about how Newsweek’s ranking goes awry.

• The denominator in the Newsweek formula is the number of graduates from each school in the report year in question. This approach winds up giving out bonus points to schools like Holmes that have high dropout rates. Many kids in Holmes, half of the Class of 2009, never make it to graduation. In Holmes the ratio of graduates to ninth grade enrollment was a dismal 50.8 percent for the Class of 2009. Statewide, the comparable figure for all high schools was much higher at 73.8 percent.

• Kentucky now tests all public school 11th grade students with the ACT college entrance test. Holmes Junior/Senior High’s 2009 ACT Composite Score of 16.3 ranked at 202 out of the 229 high schools that got score reports in that year. Keep in mind that by March of the 11th grade year when the testing was conducted, many Holmes students had already dropped out. This inflates the ACT statistic for Holmes compared to other Kentucky high schools which do much better jobs of retaining more students to graduation.

• Kentucky also tests all 10th grade students with another ACT product called PLAN. It is administered in the fall of each school year. The 2008-2009 term’s report provides data that shows Holmes’ PLAN Composite Score ranked 224 out of the 229 high schools that got scores reported for this fall-administered assessment. Keep in mind that fewer students had dropped out when this testing was conducted. That helps explain why Holmes’ rank deteriorates from 202 for ACT to 224 for the PLAN.

• Finally, only a handful of Kentucky schools ever performed so poorly in the state’s accountability program that they lost their School Based Decision Making Council authority to self-govern. Holmes was in the initial group of four schools that lost this authority in 2007. It still has not regained that self-governing authority, to my knowledge. Thus, in the eyes of the Kentucky Board of Education, this school must be considered among the state’s very worst performing.

OK, Newsweek, how’s that again about this school being among the country’s best? Sadly, it isn’t close to so. And, it is terribly unfair to present a ranking like this when other high schools here in Kentucky and elsewhere really do perform for kids.

I also wonder how many other schools in Newsweek’s listing got there due to similarly high dropout rates inflating their Newsweek ranking.

Read more »

Before we kill off coal: Let's be sure there is a viable replacement

Out in California the Green Crowd is excited about generating electricity from geothermal sources – using hot subsurface conditions to create electric power.

But, these interesting efforts have run into a real world snag.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers on line IEEE Journal edition reports, “In the American Southwest, the Energy Problem is Water.”

Very simply, the geothermal field in Southern California needs water to generate electricity, and there isn’t enough of the liquid stuff around. In addition, competition for the water that is available comes from California’s rich produce farms along the Colorado River.

Further tapping into the Colorado could bring on some interesting environmental problems. As the Salton Sea, into which the Colorado eventually flows, dries up, there are fears that severe dust storms could be triggered. That dust will contain nasty material like selenium and sodium sulfate, which are not kind to the human body. Taking more water from the Colorado River to generate electricity could turn the geothermal generation area into a hazardous location for both the electricity generating machinery involved and the workers who would operate it.

So, here is another Green idea that’s not panning out too well in practice.

We better keep our coal options up. It beats breathing selenium.

Read more »

More problems for Jefferson County's busing plan

Add another lawsuit to the problems confronting Jefferson County’s extreme ideas about busing.

This lawsuit was triggered by another parent who didn’t want his child travelling an hour, one way, to a school much farther away from home than the closest available school.

There has to be a more child-friendly way to do this than making five year olds start the school day already exhausted from an hour ride in a bus, every day. Talk about killing off a love of learning before it ever really gets going! I wonder why a suit hasn't charged these long bus rides as child abuse.

Taxpayers lose this round of government golf

Considering Lexington is in a $12 million "hole," why is it again that the city's parks and recreation bureaucrats don't want to privatize its six public golf courses?

There's really no good reason not to privatize, or at least require the golf courses to become "self-sustaining" -- not unless, of course, you believe that golf is an essential function of government.

However, there are plenty of reasons to privatize the facilities:

* The number of rounds of golf being played each year on Lexington's public golf courses are trending downward. Rounds played fell from 191,364 in 1998 to 141,898 last year. So, why again are taxpayers being forced to fund a declining enterprise at levels similar to those before the current drop in the number of rounds played?

* Parks and Recreation director Jerry Hancock is resorting to cost-switching to place bigger-spending items in a separate budget category called "Golf Administration," but not including those figures when discussing how much the public courses really cost taxpayers. So while Hancock reported to the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council that the golf courses lost $11,000 last year, he conveniently left out the cost of salaries, debt service and property taxes. Add all that in, and taxpayers are out $1.2 million a year.

* Government-subsidized golf courses create an uneven playing field.

* Few seem to know the state of the public courses' finances. Again, according to the H-L: "Criticism of the courses had emerged because it was unclear just how much money they were losing each year." Imagine if a private business operated without knowing how much potential profit it was losing?

* Essential services could get needed funding. Apparently the city feels its police and firefighting forces are expendable. Wanna bet that the $1.2 million the city government spent on golf courses last year would have prevented the 50 police and firefighter positions eliminated during the same time?

* Other cities are doing it. The golf pros at all of Louisville's courses are contract employees. In Cincinnati, a management company not only runs the city's seven courses but pays to be the concessioner running the pro shops and providing food and beverage service.

While privatizing golf courses should ultimately occur in Lexington, ensuring the courses are self-sufficient would be a good start, Warren Rogers, a Lexington business owner and member of the Bluegrass Institute Board of Directors, said.

"It's not the full loaf, but it would put the city's spending on golf under scrutiny," Rogers said. "This is not over."

Useful Tool: Kentucky District Data Profiles

Logan has been writing about Grant County Public Schools lately, so let’s use that school district as a way to introduce all of you to a neat on-line tool from the Kentucky Office of Education Accountability.

This tool is called the “Kentucky District Data Profiles.” It is a PDF document listing two pages of statistics for each school district in Kentucky. The current on-line version is for the 2007-2008 school year, but the 2008-2009 draft was approved on June 14, 2009 by the Kentucky Legislature’s Education Assessment and Accountability Review Subcommittee and should be uploaded shortly.

Here are the two pages of data for Grant County for the 2007-2008 year (you can click on them to enlarge).





As I look at this data, Grant County seems to be performing around the state average on most of these indicators. The only notable exception is the percentage of AP Exams scoring 3 or higher, where Grant County’s 12 percent figure is way below the state average of 47 percent. That won’t change much when the new data comes out, but otherwise Grant County is an average performer.

So, this makes me wonder: why didn’t Grant County want to send us their superintendent’s annual evaluation?

Anyway, getting back to the District Data Profiles, I think the Kentucky Office of Education Accountability deserves a hearty “well done” for creating this useful tool that everyone in the commonwealth can use to learn more about their taxpayer funded public school system.

Application denied!

If you were a loan officer and Kentucky wanted to borrow money, what would you say?

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

Jefferson County's ranking of SBDMs is WAY out of line!

It was one of the major surprises in last week’s meeting of the Kentucky Board of Education.

The Robert Frost Middle School is upset that it is losing its School Based Decision Making (SBDM) authority. Frost appealed that decision from education commissioner Terry Holliday to the state board, which rendered its verdict (Frost will lose SBDM control) on June 9, 2010.

During the board’s deliberation, astonishing information from the Frost appeal was revealed.

I was so surprised that I obtained a copy of the appeal package from Kentucky Department of Education Chief Legal Council Kevin Brown after the meeting to be sure I heard correctly.

After looking at this material, it was quite clear: whatever Jefferson County Public Schools looks at when it does its own evaluation of SBDM performance, it isn’t looking at some really important “stuff” that kids need to learn.

And, Jefferson County’s SBDM inspections help set up schools to get into trouble with better conducted audits.

Click the “Read More” link below to see more details.



The Frost appeal package contained this letter from the Jefferson County Public Schools Office of SBDM.


Anyone reading the last paragraph in this letter would certainly conclude that Robert Frost Middle School is doing a bang-up job, exclamation point and all.

Well, a lot of evidence says that just isn’t so. It starts with the fact that after looking at three years of test data for reading and mathematics for every school in Kentucky, Frost wound up at the very bottom of the list for student performance.

That triggered a “School Leadership Assessment” by a Kentucky Department of Education audit team in March 2010 (one month previous to the Jefferson County evaluation shown above, by the way).

Overall, the state audit concluded:

• The school leadership assessment team has determined that the council does not have sufficient capacity to manage the recovery of the school and recommends the council’s authority be transferred to the Superintendent.

More detailed discussion found in several areas of the audit says [with my added comments in brackets]:

• The school council’s policy, program, and resource discussions are sometimes focused on academic performance. [Only sometimes]
• The council’s minutes sometimes reflect an attention to data but do not reveal a consistent vision for school transformation and the resulting increase in student services and student success.
• Monthly meetings do not indicate a consistent focus on gaps and gains in student achievement and a systemic plan of intervention for at-risk students.
• The school council policy addresses the social and personal transition between schools (e.g., elementary to middle, middle to high), but regular or systematic discussions among and between schools to ensure the proper sequence of standards across all levels and to eliminate gaps and overlaps in the curriculum are not addressed in the policy nor are these discussions being initiated and facilitated by the district.
• The council submits plans to district leadership for review. These plans are primarily developed by the principal. [Like SBDMs or not, their efforts are supposed to be collaborative among all members, not just the principal]
• Most teachers are unable to use technology as an instructional approach because either the technology does not work or the principal and school council have not ensured that adequate technology is available (e.g., smart boards, Classroom Performance Systems) to have a meaningful impact on instruction. Many of the computers in the labs do not function, and the bulbs in some projectors have not been replaced, rendering projectors useless. [With such widespread outages, as overall management agency in the school, the SBDM should have taken notice, but apparently didn’t]

This is just a partial listing of audit findings.

Perhaps the most compelling findings are in the first four bullets, which relate to performance of students. Certainly, these findings are not consistent with top-level performance.

So, to reiterate, here’s my first point: What is Jefferson County looking at in their SBDM evaluations? Whatever that is, it isn’t looking at the most important “stuff,” which is what the Kentucky Department of Education says kids need.

I have another point.

During the state board’s discussions, several members noted that not one person from the Robert Frost Middle School took the time to come to the meeting. While such attendance wasn’t mandatory, if you were an educator involved in an action that was going to take power away from your school and you had filed an appeal, don’t you think you’d have sent at least one representative to the board meeting?

Robert Frost’s last day of school was June 2, 2010. Mr. Brown of the KDE informed me that the school was sent a fax with the state board’s agenda to hear their appeal at least two days before the meeting. The board meeting and the agenda item to hear appeals was posted in the Kentucky Department of Education’s web site even earlier.

Still, no-one showed up from Frost.

Somehow, after looking at the audit report, this absence fits. “Suspension” for the Frost SBDM seems highly warranted.

However, the responsibility for the Frost SBDM now shifts to the Jefferson County superintendent. Given the issues with his SBDM Office, I’m not sure if this will work much better for the students.

Lots more Kentucky students will need college remediation this fall

Tighter standards are coming

I commented earlier on the grim reality for recent Kentucky high school graduates who go on to our postsecondary system with inadequate preparation. Chances are low that they will ever win a coveted degree, especially for students entering two-year degree programs.

Because of the low odds, some stark realities are about to hit kids who just graduated from our high schools and will start college in the fall. About 1,595 more of them than last year will need remedial courses in math. That increases the already high remediation rate of 29 percent to 37 percent for this subject.

Furthermore, almost 2,000 more freshmen will have to get reading help before they can start credit-bearing college work. That will increase the reading remedial rate from 17 percent from last year to 28 percent.

The trigger for these sharp rises are new college standards for 2010 that determine who requires remediation. Tougher standards will better identify the students who need to repair their inadequate preparation in Kentucky’s public high schools.

Read more »

If they're not prepared for postsecondary education, they probably won't ever graduate

The statistics are sobering.

Unprepared students entering Kentucky’s four-year postsecondary institutions face poor odds they’ll ever graduate.

That point was made by this graph presented to the Kentucky legislature’s Interim Joint Education Committee yesterday by Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education president Robert L. King.


The orange bars on this graph show the odds of a Not College Ready student graduating in four, five or six years from a four-year college program in Kentucky. Even after six years of study, these students have notably less than a one in two chance they will ever get their degree.

In truth, even those students who are considered “College Ready” upon admission still face serious challenges. Only two of three prepared students get a degree even after six years in what should be a four-year program, as the blue bars show.

Note that this graph only considers recent Kentucky high school graduates, which makes it very pertinent to discussions of supposed success under KERA.

King’s statistics for the situation in the Associates’ Degree programs look much worse, as the next graph shows.


Even after an extra year of study, only about one in five students gets an Associates’ Degree in this state.

The hopeful news in these slides is that King projects the picture will improve as the impacts of Senate Bill 1 (from the 2009 regular legislative session) start to take hold. But, those are just projections at this point. It’s going to take a lot of changes in Kentucky’s public education classrooms to make those targets become reality.

How much do you think Grant County Schools spends on legal services?

So I hate to be the messenger but...

Yesterday, I posted a blog about how Grant County Schools decided that it would be a better idea to give the run-around for a simple Open Records Request (that had been filled by 30+ other school districts already) by opting to involve their legal representation rather than just send me the requested information.  I posted the letter I received from the nice folks at O'Hara, Ruberg, Taylor, Sloan and Sergent and asked this question:

Is it a good use of taxpayer money to involve a law firm in a simple Freedom of Information request when the request could have just been filled like all the other schools districts that received the same request? Furthermore, is it transparent?

Well, my curiosity got the better of me.  Thankfully, last year, we did an open records request to obtain the Grant County Schools check register.  And what did we find?  In fiscal year 2009, Grant County Schools paid a legal fee of:

                                                                    $109,727.81 

Wow.  A six-figure expenditure for legal services in a school district with only 5 schools!?!?? Help me understand this.

Comparable school districts, such as Lee County Schools (4 schools), opted to spend money on legal services by individual use rather than a one time expense and spent a mere fraction of what Grant County did.

• Is this a good use of taxpayer money?
• Why do they feel the need to retain legal services with six-figures
• Why couldn't they just fulfill the request?

This is why our education system continues to "need" money.

More woes for Jefferson County busing plan

The Jefferson County plan for busing students hither and yon has now collected a new set of complaints; this time it’s a 34 page report from the NAACP.

Some highlights:

• The NAACP is upset that some parents who objected to long bus rides for their children apparently were successful in getting their children reassigned.

• The organization alleges “…certain board members appear to be trying to dismantle the New Plan (sic).”

• In a comment that seems aimed at Jefferson County’s magnet schools, there are also charges that, “…decisions about which students can and cannot attend certain schools in the district are made within the walls of those select schools. The decision is not based on grades or other academic factors, but a unilateral decision made by a principal or assistant principal.”

Read more »

King Tut and Kentucky's schools

King Tut's tomb may have been found in near-perfect condition. But it's obvious from the research: Kentucky's education system isn't ready for such an inspection.

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

Records requests, run-arounds, and law firms! Oh my!

Operation: Open Records 2010 continues with some amusing results.

I received a letter this morning from a nice group of attorneys representing Grant County Public Schools. I requested the criteria used to evaluate their superintendent and a copy of the most recent superintendent evaluation. Here's the letter I received in response...

Now, really? Come on.

• Sure, I addressed it to "To Whom It May Concern" because quite frankly I had no idea at the time who the custodian of the records was. What else was I supposed to say?
• I've already received over 30 responses from other districts who were sent the same request worded the exact same way. No one else had trouble forwarding this letter to the infamous "To Whom It May Concern". Why did Grant County Schools have so much trouble with that?
• The most infuriating thing is that the letter was sent to the Grant County School's address, not the law offices of O'Hara, Ruberg, Taylor, Sloan and Sergent. This means that the letter was received by someone at Grant County Schools, forwarded over to the law firm (which I'm sure is not cheap) for the law firm to tell me that the person I need to talk to is actually located at the address I sent the first letter to! Wow. This is why our education system bleeds money: rather than comply with a simple Freedom of Information request, Grant County Schools chose to involve their legal representation.
  

Is this transparency in public education and is this the best way to spend taxpayer money?

John Blundell speaks at Bluegrass Institute event

Recently the Bluegrass Institute hosted an event with author John Blundell.  Blundell is a biographer and  confidant to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.  In this discussion he provides a description of her life, a look at her policies, and some insight to how she would operate in today's political climate.

John Blundell book signing Keynote from freedomky on Vimeo.

Hollow civil rights not just a problem in Louisville

Fayette County: Pay attention!

Bluegrass Institute’s syndicated columnist Jim Waters’ latest column discusses how talk without effective action still leaves black students at the back of the education bus in Kentucky.

Jim’s article focuses on Louisville, where only 22 percent of the black high school students were proficient in math in 2009 Kentucky Core Content Tests (KCCT).

But, don’t go getting smug on us, Fayette County.

Your high schools do an even worse job for blacks in high school, as this table shows.


Blacks in Fayette County have much higher proficiency rates than in Jefferson County in both elementary and middle schools, but Fayette County totally loses that advantage in its high schools.

With some impressive resources like both UK and Transylvania University that could be tapped right there in town, how does Lexington get itself into such a position compared to Louisville?

This is also a great example of how Louisville isn’t the only place in Kentucky that could benefit from some school choice options like charter schools. Charters, as we have pointed out before, do a great job for minority kids.

More on high school graduation rates from Education Week

Yesterday, I discussed the fact that new high school graduation rate data from Education Week shows that Kentucky’s “official” graduation rate for the Class of 2007 is more than 10 points higher than the rate Education Week is estimating (based on a more accurate formula than Kentucky currently uses).

Today, let’s examine graduation rates for whites and blacks in Kentucky and the Nation. This data comes from a table in the EdWeek report titled “Progress on Graduation Rate Stalls.”


Note that Kentucky’s whites, who make up about 85 percent of our student population, fare notably worse in graduating than their peers nationally. The state's blacks do a lot better than blacks elsewhere, however.

New Kentucky Board of Education?

According to statute, terms of service for the majority of the 11 members of the Kentucky Board of Education expired in April. However, Governor Steve Beshear has yet to name the seven replacements.

The governor could rename existing members or select new faces. The character of the board could change radically as a result.

Kentucky Public Radio’s Tony McVeigh discusses the issues in a recent text and linked audio podcast here.

Although statute says most of the current board’s members’ terms have expired, they are continuing to serve until replaced based on a Kentucky Attorney General’s opinion [1991 WL 533812 (Ky. A.G.)] that dates back to 1991. That opinion actually concerns another type of board vacancy for a local planning and zoning commission and actually draws from a legal opinion from South Carolina, as no Kentucky case law seems to exist in this area.

The Attorney General’s opinion has not been examined by a Kentucky court.

Climate council's plot will thicken environmental myths

Caring for the environment should be embraced, but not at the expense of Kentuckians who want to control their own lives, businesses and futures. Politicians continue to threaten the liberties of tax-paying Kentuckians under the guise of 'helping' the environment.

Click here to read the latest Bluegrass Beacon.

More evidence of inflated high school graduation rate reporting in Kentucky

Education Week’s research unit just released “Diplomas Count 2010.”

You can use one of the many web pages in the release to find graduation rates for individual states, including Kentucky.

I show those EdWeek rates here along with the available graduation rate data from the latest Nonacademic Data Report From the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE).


As you can see, the latest EdWeek estimates of Kentucky’s graduation rates are more than 10 points lower than the rates we have been “officially” given by the KDE.

Also note that EdWeek showed a slight decline in the rate between the 2005-06 and 2006-07 school years while KDE claimed there was an increase.

Finally! State responds to institute's call to privatize services, increase fees and cut costs at state parks

Since the Bluegrass Institute issued its groundbreaking 2005 report, “Mousetraps and Stale Coffee: Making the case for privatizing Kentucky State Parks,” there has been incremental movement toward cost savings at these money-losing behemoths.

Today, the results of a glossy report by an out-of-state outfit called PROS Consulting, were released. And while the report cost taxpayers more than $400,000, at least it offered some cost-cutting recommendations:

•Closing the state’s 17 resort parks on Mondays and Tuesdays during the winter.

•Charge entry fees.

•Increasing fees for overnight resort lodge stays.

•Using temp personnel agencies to hire the part-time seasonal worker that provide needed personnel during peak seasons.

•Cutting workers’ hours.

•Issuing requests for proposals to determine private companies’ interest in operating the parks system’s golf courses and selected restaurants. In areas that allow alcohol sales, the requests will ask vendors to address the possibility of alcohol sales at those locations.

•Improve park programming.

There’s no guarantee that the bureaucracy currently operating our parks system at a financial loss will go along with all of these recommendations. But hard economic times will force them to explain their refusal to accept the kind of cost-cutting measures that the Bluegrass Institute and others have recommended for years.

Still keeping an eye out...We may have struck a nerve

So...I posted a blog yesterday talking about how the Kentucky School Board Association (KSBA) was keeping an eye on our 2010 Open Records Project and informed it's followers on Twitter.  It seems we've struck a nerve...

Yesterday (June 9), on the KSBA website, an article was posted about our 2010 Open Records Project.  This is a bit more in depth than the Tweet from Tuesday evening...
 

Interesting. Well, to set things straight, The Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions isn't a critic of Kentucky schools.  The Bluegrass Institute is a critic of poor results.

Oh, and there were 35 requests...on the first day.  More to come!

U.S. Constitution - Irrelevant Historical Artifact

Or so says Wilder Publications according to Fox News. It would seem one publishing company would portray our U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, Common Sense, the Articles of Confederation, and the Federalist Papers not as significant and binding legal and historical documents at the foundation of our free Republic but as interpretive literary works in need of a warning label.

Union loses fight to stop federal NCLB accountability

The National Education Association has lost a legal battle to have the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) declared an unfunded mandate.

On June 7, 2010 the US Supreme Court refused to hear the union’s appeal of a lower court ruling on the case, which found NCLB was not an unfunded mandate.

Education Week has the details (subscription).

Of special interest is the fact that US Solicitor General Elena Kagan wrote a position paper for the federal government urging the court not to hear the appeal. Ms. Kagan is now a nominee to the US Supreme Court, but little is known about her positions on various issues.

Teachers union tries to mug Marine for $500

Retired military personnel who run Junior ROTC programs in our public schools are a unique breed of educator. Not only do they fit a very different mold from most teachers, but their salary and benefits package largely comes from the US military.

That last fact makes it problematic for them to join a union.

But, that didn’t stop the teachers union in Massachusetts from trying to get money out of a Marine JROTC instructor in Worcester.

Read this incredible tale here.

Don’t pass up reading some of the comments from readers.

Anyone know if JROTC instructors in Kentucky face similar issues?

Do we need KACo?

During tight budget times, the questions should not stop with: Has the Kentucky Association of Counties (KACo) implemented the kind of internal controls that will prevent future agency officials from tucking taxpayers' dollars in bikini strings and using KACo credit cards for escort services.

The questions shouldn't even end with: Will KACo be more transparent with future spending? Senate Bill 88 ensures that KACo will be even more transparent with their public dollars than will the opportunistic politicians who voted for the bill will be with state government.

The question that must be asked, but isn't -- for obvious reasons -- by Denny Nunnelley, KACo's executive director and CEO, is: Why should taxpayers be forced to continue funding this profligately wasteful organization?

Like labor unions, KACo may have served a legitimate role when it began in the 1970s of providing insurance plans that county officials couldn't find or afford. Like KACo president Michael Foster, Nunnelley doesn't indicate whether KACo has even researched whether the private sector provides needed services at competitive rates.

As I asked in a recent Bluegrass Beacon column: Is it time to "right the ship or mothball it?"

But at least if KACo is allowed to stay afloat, would it be too much of taxpayers to ask that it do so without new $12 million digs, especially during the current economic downturn?

Louisville middle school loses appeal to keep Site Base Council

State Board of Education unimpressed

As the Courier-Journal reports today the Robert Frost Middle School in Jefferson County lost its appeal to keep its School Based Decision Making Council (often called the “Site Base Council”) self-governance authority.

This state board decision follows a March ‘Leadership Assessment’ audit that says Frost’s council, “…does not have sufficient capacity to manage the recovery of the school and recommends the council’s authority be transferred to the Superintendent.” That audit was triggered when Frost was identified as one of Kentucky’s 10 ‘Persistently Low-Achieving Schools’ earlier this year.

With its vote, the Kentucky Board of Education stood solidly behind Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday’s earlier decision and the audit process instituted by House Bill 176 earlier this year. That was a plus for increased school accountability.

Some other news is more problematic.

Read more »

Times Tribune files open meeting law complaint against Knox County Schools

The Times Tribune newspaper has filed an open meeting violation complaint with Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway’s office.

• The newspaper’s claim: Calls made by the Knox County Public Schools superintendent to his school board members concerning the merger of the Lynn Camp Middle/High School and West Knox Elementary School were inappropriate and took place outside of a public meeting

• Knox County Superintendent Walter T. Hulett’s response: Newspaper’s charges are unfounded and untrue

• Normal Response Time for Attorney General: 10 days

For more background, check here.

They are keeping an eye on us...

I blogged yesterday on the excitement around our 2010 Open Records Project getting underway with the filing of over 30 records requests for superintendent performance evaluations in under-performing districts.  It seems the Kentucky School Boards Association has been keeping tabs; they were sure to inform their followers on Twitter...

Yup! That's us! The evaluations have already begun to pour in and I applaud the early responders! A few "interesting" pieces of information have already been picked out.

More information on this project in the coming days, stay tuned!

Parents need help in fight to get services for learning disabled children in public schools

Talk with the parents. They have love, stamina, dedication, tenacity and frustration. They don’t get much help. They battle the power of a complacent bureaucracy that isn’t held accountable to provide services mandated by law.

Kentucky legislators don’t have the courage to buck strong teachers-union lobbyists to offer these parents school choice.

Although it might be tempting for parents to let the system take over and allow service coordinators, evaluators and physicians make decisions about what is appropriate for their child, many can’t.

Why? No two children are alike. The special education evaluator sees only a snapshot of abilities and needs. The teacher sees only behavior in class, not outside of school. The doctor sees the child in a controlled environment.

Parents must fight for these children’s rights.

The Bluegrass Institute has a Special Needs portal on its wiki to help parents get started.

Watch a short video to better understand the steps and the challenges facing parents with learning disabled children.

Elected officials are very willing to let these families and children suffer. Are you? Will you stand up and help?

Why does Kentucky still have an income tax?

States without an income tax outperform higher-taxed states. So...why does Kentucky still have an income tax?

Click here to read the latest Bluegrass Bullets.

Blogging good enough to go to press

I was honored that the Times Tribune in Corbin Kentucky found one of my recent blogs about activities in the Knox Public School District worthy of publication as a guest editorial.

You can read it here.

Democratic governor signs special needs scholarship bill into law in Sooner country

Oklahoma became the fifth state in the nation to offer a special needs scholarship program today.

Democrat Gov. Brad Henry signed the "Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarships for Students with Disabilities Act into law today. The scholarship program is named after the governor's infant daughter who died of Werdnig-Hoffman Disease.

Coming in the midst of the Race to the Top fiasco, passage of this bill indicates that school choice continues to attract the support of taxpayers and policymakers who believe these special children can overcome their disabilities and participate in the American dream.

Check out our new Special Needs portal on the Bluegrass Institute's wiki here. This page also contains information to help parents of special needs children navigate the system and help fight for their children's future.

Let the developments in Oklahoma be a loud clear message for Kentucky's teachers unions and their political pals in Frankfort who have dug in against educational liberty for parents: It's not a question of if we will have school choice. It's only a matter of when.

Ignoring the people: A 'Ceausescuean moment?'

Senators recently booted from office may have experienced what Cato President Ed Crane calls a "Ceausescuean moment."

In his recent gem of a column, "What We Have Here Is a Failure to Communicate," Crane relates how he found a classic example of politicians' failure to communicate with the citizenry in a video of Romanian tyrant Nicolae Ceausescu's speech "to the teeming masses gathered in a square in Bucharest.

"Oblivious to the mood of the people, Ceausescu is at his bombastic, self-important best until he realizes that the chants from the crowd below are not praise, but something rather to the contrary.

"The look on his face: priceless."

How many others will experience their own "Ceausescuean moment" this November?

Tuesday Links

• Who has a better understanding of economics? Hmm...
• BP is offering to compensate folks in the gulf for lost wages, profits, etc... Of course there is some paper work involved in this process.  But don't worry, the White House is thinking about sending the National Guard to help fill out that paperwork.  Cool. Wait...what!?
• The Lexington Herald-Leader has published a fantastic database of state employee salaries...Check this out!
• Want to make a difference? Lend your knowledge.

Open the FOIA floodgates!

We submitted 35 open records requests yesterday as part of our 2010 Open Records Project! These requests were submitted to school districts across the state who have not made adequate yearly progress or have schools in them that have not made adequate yearly progress according to No Child Left Behind.

Stay tuned for more details on these requests...we hope to shed some light on under-performing education leaders!

Honest high school graduation rates will be lower

Kentucky Department of Education agrees with us

Recent information from the Kentucky Department of Education supports my concerns that the recently reported high school graduation rate in Kentucky is much too high.

How much too high?

Maybe as much as 10 points.

If so, Kentucky’s true high school graduation rate in 2009 could be only around 74 percent, not the recently reported rate of 83.91 percent.

Read more »

Monday links

Lots o' neat stuff today, check out these links!

• The latest EconTalk podcast features a discussion about prohibition in the early 20th century and it's cultural and economic impact.  An interesting discussion in light of the much debated war on drugs.
• If you aren't following FreedomKentucky on Twitter...well then...well...you should be.
• Cato recently blogged an interesting article arguing that we need fewer public school jobs as opposed to more.  Check this out!

Taking liberty to the airwaves

Jim Waters, Bluegrass Institute's director of policy and communications, guest hosts for Les Naiman this Sunday on "The Les Naiman Show" from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Louisville's 970 WGTK, Intelligent Conservative Talk. Listen live here

The number to call in on the show is 502-571-CHAT.

Where have all the young men gone?

I’ve been looking over the new Nonacademic Data Brief for 2010 that the Kentucky Department of Education released on June 1, 2010. There is a very unsatisfactory trend in the numbers. While they look bad for females, they look much worse for male students in this state.

The numbers I am referring to are the membership numbers by grade found on Page 7 of the Brief. They are used to compute dropout rates.

While the dropout rates are not reliable, the membership numbers agree well with some other reports from the department. Here is what those numbers look like as we follow the high school graduating class of 2009 from their seventh to twelfth grade years.


In grade 7, there were 26,431 males and 24,913 females in the class. Thus, males outnumbered females by 1,518 students.

Now flash forward to 2009. There are only 21,231 males and 21.801 females left in the class.

Along the way we lost at least 5,200 male students and 3,112 females. Incredibly, the males sank from a surplus of over 1,500 students compared to the females in the seventh grade to where they were well under 500 students behind the females as graduation grew near.

The data in the table implies we lost 5,200 males plus 3,112 females, or 8,312 students total from this class before they graduated. The Nonacademic Data Brief would like us to believe we only lost 5,806 students, but no-one, including the state auditor, has believed the fiction of the department’s dropout numbers for many years.

Sadly, it gets even worse.

I am pretty sure that about 1,500 more students were added to the class when it entered ninth grade. Those students came from private schools in Kentucky that only run K to grade 8 programs. I don’t have a breakout by sex.

Anyway, add in those 1,500 students and it implies the real loss for the Class of 2009 is closer to 9,800 students.

And, boys are taking a much larger hit than girls in these very sad numbers.

The adages, like the pension deficit, really add up

Another legislative session has come and gone and Kentucky's political leaders continue to ignore the public-pension crisis, the greatest threat to the commonwealth's economy.

Click here to read the latest Bluegrass Beacon.

Common Core Standards finally released for English Language Arts and Mathematics

The long awaited and much ballyhooed Common Core Standards for English Language Arts and Mathematics have finally been released (about a half-year behind schedule) by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers.

I suspect these standards will be a considerable improvement over the standards that were created to support our defunct CATS assessment.

I am not sure the standards will be good enough to prepare our kids to meet international competition. They may not even be as good as top state standards in places like Massachusetts.

They certainly need more fleshing out to become a fully useful document for teachers and individuals who create assessments. However, I am going to wait for technical experts to weigh in on those and other concerns.

In any event, Kentucky has already voted to adopt these standards as our own. How much additional material we will need to add to the core standards and whether they ultimately will lead to improvement for our students remains to be seen.

You can find links to both of the new standards in the Common Core State Standards Initiative web site.

If you read them, ask yourself if you can tell from the standards exactly what is needed to prepare your child for adult life and if everything needed is covered.

DC teachers opt for pay for performance

The Washington Post reports that the teachers union in the nation’s capital has approved a new contract that expands Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s ability to remove weak teachers, placing the DC school system on a growing list of places like Colorado and New York that are letting things like classroom results, not seniority, determine how much teachers get paid.

Meanwhile, in Kentucky, thanks to our School Based Decision Making school governance model and other outdated ideas, teachers, not district leaders, are in the driver’s seat. In Kentucky, teacher seniority rather than performance still rules statewide.

Forecast for Kentucky’s economy? Bleak

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and supply-side economist Art Laffer recently released their third edition of "Rich States, Poor States," which evaluates states' economic competiveness.

Considering its economically stifling policies, it's not surprising that Kentucky ranks No. 40,("1"=best,"50"=worst). If I can do simple math and there are still only 50 states (in contrast to President Obama’s reference to "57 states"), then No. 40 out of 50 isn’t too swell. To be precise, despite the fact that Kentucky's ranking is up from No. 44 in 2008, it remains mired in the bottom 20 percent of states.




States that spend -- and tax -- less experience greater economic growth. Considering Kentucky’s top marginal personal income tax and corporate income tax rates are the ninth- and 18th-highest respectively, its dismal ranking is well deserved.

On top of the high tax rates, state government was forced to rely on $500 million in federal stimulus funding to balance the budget approved during May's special legislative session. It's clear: We're spending beyond our means.

High taxes and overspending are the main ingredients in the recipe of downtrodden economies.