Tuesday Links

Here are some links for your Tuesday!

1. Russ Roberts of George Mason University hosts a podcast called EconTalk.  It is a free download once a week and covers a variety of economic topics and guests.  Check this out!

2. Hmm...spy satellites used on United States citizens? What's the justification for this? Tough sell to me any way you slice it.


3. A couple of new articles on FreedomKentucky.org contain a lot of good information regarding public pensions: Deferred Compensation Plans and Inviolable Contracts.  More pension information coming soon!

No mayoral candidate in Louisville will defend the city’s school busing plan

WAVE-3 just interviewed the major mayoral candidates in Louisville about the city’s insane busing plan.

Even the most wishy-washy response made it clear that none of the candidates favors trapping kids on buses for two hours a day. All seem open to the need for changes.

Sometimes, the right choice is so obvious that it even crosses all the political lines. Two hours on a bus every day is too long.

So, why is it that such universally held opinions still escape the education crowd?

Louisiana Katrina Miracle: Look what’s happened in charter school rich New Orleans

The Louisiana Department of Education publishes an annual report on the ACT performance of each graduating class. The report breaks the scores and number of ACT test takers down to the individual high school level. That allowed me to take a look at how charter schools and regular public schools in Hurricane-Katrina-ravaged New Orleans performed.

The results are remarkable. While I still have some unanswered questions, a couple of observations are easy to make:

• The high school infrastructure in New Orleans clearly was rebuilt after Katrina with a very heavy contribution from charter schools.

• Post-Katrina New Orleans is doing far better on the ACT than it was before it became largely a charter high school city.


• Scores are up all over New Orleans in both regular and charter high schools, but the rise in charter school ACT scores has been really remarkable.

To learn a lot more, and see some more supporting graphs, click the “Read more” link below.

Read more »

More on the 2010 ACT results for Kentucky versus Louisiana

Are some Kentucky schools teaching college track courses in name only?

I’ve already blogged about the fact that Louisiana tested almost all (98%) of its high school graduating class of 2010 on the ACT college entrance test, which nearly equals Kentucky’s 100 percent testing rate for its 2010 graduates. Thus, comparisons between Kentucky and Louisiana’s ACT performance seem worthwhile to present. I think there are important messages here that Kentucky needs to heed.

I pointed out earlier that despite Hurricane Katrina’s devastation, Louisiana outscored us overall on the ACT in 2010. However, the Kentucky to Louisiana comparison gets even more interesting when we break the data down.

I did that for minorities in this blog.

However, more data is available.

I used Table 2.10 from the individual “ACT Profile Report – State” reports for Kentucky and Louisiana (available here) to assemble the data below (click on table to enlarge).


For each state, the data shaded in green shows the number of students taking at least the ACT’s recommended college core curriculum in each subject (N) along with the percentages of students who scored at or above the ACT’s College Readiness Benchmark (CRB) score in each subject and the state average ACT scale score (Avg) in that subject. This data comes directly from Table 2.10 in the ACT Profile Reports. It includes results for all students, public, private and home school combined.

The additional rows, shaded yellow, contain my calculations of the percentages of the ACT takers in each state from the Class of 2010 who reported taking at least the minimum College Core course load. I calculated these numbers from additional data found in Table 2.10 that is not shown here. That data includes the number of students in each state who did not take the core (Note: I ignored an additional group of students that didn’t answer ACT’s questions about course taking patterns).

The table shows the numbers, but what do they imply? Click the “Read more” link below to find out.

Read more »

Statement on the passing of Prichard leader Robert Sexton

Statement on the death of Robert F. Sexton, executive director of the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence:

"Mr. Sexton should be remembered for his tireless dedication to improving Kentucky's education system. While we had differences of views on how to reach that goal, Mr. Sexton was committed to calling attention to the desperate need for education reform in the commonwealth. We extend our condolences to Mr. Sexton's family and colleagues." - Jim Waters, Vice President for Policy and Communications

Education commissioner adopts realistic outlook following Kentucky’s Race to the Top failure

Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday is taking a realistic, and optimistic, outlook about what Kentucky’s education system now will need to implement Senate Bill 1 (2009 Regular Session) after the announcement two days ago that Kentucky had not won any money in Race to the Top, Phase 2.

The commissioner told yesterday’s meeting in Frankfort of the School Curriculum Assessment and Accountability Committee:

“So I am saying everywhere as loud and clear as I can be heard, that I don’t think we need new dollars. I think we need redirected dollars in the state budget because new dollars are going to be difficult to find.

But, this is not a popular statement.

The state board last October started looking at ‘flow-through dollars’ – there’s $125 million that flows through the department of education for special programs that are great programs – love every one of them – but you cannot continue to run the small pilot programs for just a handful of districts when every teacher in the commonwealth needs textbooks.”

The commissioner is going to need support from legislators, who will need to refrain from loading down the education department with a lot of unfunded mandates and special, limited benefits pork projects while the education department works to bring Senate Bill 1 on line in an economical and effective manner.

Regarding the commissioner’s comment that he can make it work with existing resources, this is exactly the common-sense, frugal approach to government spending that we need to hear a lot more about in Frankfort, and not just from state educators.

Quote of the century

“Instead of trying to figure out how to get more money for education, schools across the state are figuring out how to get more education for our money. We should all follow their examples. And while we are at it, we must channel the resources we do have directly to student learning.” – Tony Bennett, Indiana's superintendent of public instruction, during his “State of Education” speech Monday (quoted in today's Education Reform Radar).

Jim Waters of BIPPS quoted in Herald-Leader

 Jim Waters, Vice President of Policy and Communcations at the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, was quoted in today's Lexington Herald-Leader regarding vehicle upgrades and purchases by Agriculture Commissioner Richie Farmer for the Kentucky Department of Agriculture.

The increase in the Department of Agriculture's fleet is in conflict with many of the sacrifices that the rest of state government has been encouraged to work toward in a time when budget crises run rampant across the nation.

The Bluegrass Institute is a firm supporter of fiscal responsibility.  State leaders must make difficult decisions in difficult times - this is what they are elected for.

View the entire article here.

A Republic?

Jefferson County busing mess: Are we getting the whole story?

Part 2

I posted Part 1 of this blog thread several days ago, and I think it would be worthwhile to summarize some things we’ve heard, so far, from reader comments and other discussions.

• Informants indicate busing problems extend beyond the three schools elementary schools that the Jefferson County Public School System officially identified. For example, we have received specific comments about problems in Cochran Elementary and the Jefferson County Traditional Middle School.

• In addition to children getting home late, there are reports of problems with the morning pickups. One problem: Students are arriving at school late.

• In some cases, it is reported to us that after the first day, buses didn’t even stop at a morning pickup site. Kids missed school completely for days without any follow-up.

• The management of after-school waits for bus pickups is sometimes terrible. Kids reportedly have been forced to sit (no lying down!) on hard gym floors for hours without water or food.

• To make the busing look successful, an informant says some schools actually dismissed EARLY! How does that improve education?

• There are rumors of even worse conditions in the bus transfer yards.

So, Louisville, how is week two going? Is everything fixed, or are kids still spending hours a day trapped in the busing madness?

Race to the Top: What we have learned, Can learn-hopefully

From Penney Sanders

The always insightful friend of the Bluegrass Institute, master educator Dr. Penney Sanders, has posted her reaction to Kentucky’s loss of Race to the Top, Phase 2.

It’s a good read.

Kentucky Chamber of Commerce gets it: The Bluegrass State needs charter schools

The Kentucky Chamber of Commerce’s August 25th Newslink e-mail laments the state’s loss of as much as $175 million in the Race to the Top education funding competition. The Chamber pulls no punches, laying blame for that loss on the legislature’s failure to implement charter school legislation as part of our Race to the Top entry.

Says Chamber president David Adkission of the legislature’s inaction:

“It is disappointing for Kentucky’s business community that consensus could not be reached on charter schools and that the state missed out on federal funds as a result.”

The Chamber’s Newslink ends with this positive note:

“The Kentucky Chamber will continue to press the case that charter schools, in situations where certain schools consistently underperform, should be one of the tools by which Kentucky schools can improve.”

The Bluegrass Institute agrees that the state needs this educational tool and welcomes the Chamber’s continuing commitment to this fight to do the right thing for Kentucky’s children.

Gov. ignores legislators' decision, funds radical left-wing environmental extremists

Gov. Beshear has decided to spend $200,000 of taxpayers' hard-earned dollars to fund the radical Center for Climate Strategies.

I wonder what coal miners and all of those furloughed and laid-off workers think about that?

Losing a few kids on opening day of school: No big deal?

Along with rubber-stamped evaluations and pay increases regardless of results, Kentucky principals also can lose students entrusted to their care and nothing happens but a reprimand.

Bill would end nonsense busing chaos in Jefferson County Schools

The Courier-Journal reports on a live WHAS announcement today that Kentucky Senate President David Williams and state Sen. Dan Seum of Louisville will prefile a bill to insure that parents can send their children to the school nearest their home so long as that school does not have special entry requirements.

Clearly, the busing mess in Jefferson County is starting to get attention far outside the city.

Governor Beshear: Charter schools for Kentucky not a dead issue

Kentucky Public Radio reporter Tony McVeigh reports that in his reaction comments to Kentucky losing Race to the Top money yesterday, Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear also remarked about charter schools, “I think that’s an issue that will be discussed in the future. And as I’ve said, I think if it’s used properly, it can be a useful tool.”

Given Kentucky’s recent education stumbles, including a drop in the state’s public school ACT Composite Score and the clear signal from Washington via Race to the Top that other states, not Kentucky, are the new darlings of education reform, we clearly need some “useful tools” in our education system.

Blacks' attitude toward education not what it used to be

A recent forum sponsored by the Kentucky Education Restoration Alliance (KERA) and held at Louisville's Kentucky Center for African American Heritage emphasized the need for education reform to again become part of the Civil Rights movement.

Walter Jones, associate pastor of the Baptized Pentecostal Baptist Church in Louisville and a former policy analyst for The Family Foundation, spoke about the need for the black community to elevate its attitudes about education and expectations for black students.

Jones used a personal reference to emphasize: There was a time when education was a higher priority in the black community.

Was Robin Hood a freedom fighter or medieval socialist?

Liberty lovers across the commonwealth should claim the freedom fighter of Sherwood Forest as one of their own.

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

CAGW names Rep. Hal Rogers 'Porker of the Month'

Washington D.C. think tank Citizens Against Government Waste has named Kentucky Rep. Hal Rogers as their "Porker of the Month".  How embarrassing...

Pre-Crime technology? Really?

So apparently "pre-crime" technology is all the rage now.  Washington D.C. announced that it will soon be implementing this technology to predict when crimes will happen based on the length of sentences, ages of previous offenders, and location (which implies tracking of some sort).  Sounds too wild to be true? Almost like a movie? Well it was - Minority Report.

I don't know about you but tracking someone and plugging information such as age, previous crimes, geographic movement patterns, etc... sounds like guilty until proven innocent.  This is a dangerous road.  Lets remind our representatives that this is not constitutional.

On the air: Institute talks charter schools, Race to the Top

Jim Waters, vice president of policy and communications, will talk charter schools and address today's announcement that Kentucky did not receive Race to the Top funding on Bowling Green's WKCT-AM 930.

Waters will appear on "Drive Time" with host Chad Young at 5:20 this afternoon. Listen here.

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.

Kentucky loses Race to the Top - Again?

Multiple news sources are reporting that Kentucky has lost the Race to the Top (RTTT) federal education funding competition – again.

Formal announcement is expected from the US Department of Education a bit later today along with the amount of awards each winning state will receive.

Per multiple news sources, the winners include;

• Florida,
• Georgia,
• Hawaii,
• Massachusetts,
• Maryland,
• New York,
• North Carolina,
• Ohio,
• Rhode Island and
• Washington, D.C.

Kentucky was the only state in the finalists for Phase II without any charter school legislation. Most likely, if the list above is confirmed, a significant factor in the state’s loss will be the fact that Kentucky denies education flexibility for parents.

Without RTTT money, Kentucky’s educators will have to make some tough decisions in order to implement Senate Bill 1 requirements from the 2009 regular legislative session.

More as this story develops.

Fox 41: Parents had to sign up in advance to address Jefferson County Board of Education

Rule limited discussion of problems

The Jefferson County Board of Education’s rule is hard to understand.

If you want to speak at many legislative meetings, all you have to do is show up a few minutes early and sign up on the speakers’ list. The same was true under former Kentucky Board of Education chair Joe Brothers’ rules – show up a few minutes before the board meeting started, and you got to speak.

Not so for the Jefferson County Board of Education. Fox news reported that anyone who wanted to speak at last night’s meeting had to sign up in advance – other reports said no later than several hours before the meeting – and those who signed up had to say what they planned to talk about.

This clearly limited parent presentations last night.

Follow-up Fox coverage today says a parent who didn’t sign up was ejected when she tried to address the board.

Twelve parents did get to speak, but Fox provides little coverage of what they said.

So, we still don’t know if the two examples of bad busing experiences discussed in this blog and a comment to the blog were widespread or mostly isolated problems.

If you know of other examples of the Jefferson County busing program going crazy, we want to hear about it. Please leave a comment or call the Bluegrass Institute (270-782-2140) so one of our staff can contact you. We especially want to hear if there are more recent problems from this week.

Quote of the day

"The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem."

-Milton Friedman

JCPS school board wants higher taxes to fund future busing fiascos

On top of its busing fiasco, the Jefferson County Public Schools board wants to raise property taxes for the third year in a row.

The Louisville TEA party is urging all taxpayers to show up tonight to oppose tax hikes. The 6:45 p.m. hearing will be at the VanHoose Center at 3332 Newburg Road, just south of the I-264 (Watterson) Expressway.

The release states:

"If passed, it will mean a total of about a 10% increase over the past three years. They recently gave everyone in the JCPS system a 1% raise, when many people in Louisville are unemployed. This tax increase is totally uncalled for. Especially in light of their rich retirement system (people who retire at age 55, with 33 years of service can actually receive a net check in retirement which is higher then their net check while working, and with a built in 1 1/2% COLA each year)."

It's good to see the TEA parties getting engaged in the midst of the chaos known as the Jefferson County Public Schools system.

Monday Links

Here's some links for this fine Monday!

1. This school seems a bit excessive, no?
2. Cafe Hayek explains government math with BBC comedy.  What more could you want!?
3. We are still trying to spread the word of limited, transparent, and accountable government on Facebook!  Please add us here! If you have already added us, suggest us to your friends on Facebook. Thanks in advance!
4. SunshineReview.org discusses good performance as a natural offshoot of transparency.
5. Last week we sent out 30+ open records requests as a part of Operation: Open Records 2010, check these out! We will keep you updated.

Now that's not how we treat a guest, is it?

A couple weeks ago Tracy McDaniel traveled to Frankfort, Kentucky from his home in Oklahoma to discuss his experience with KIPP schools and the benefits that charter schools create in the education system. You can see his testimony below...



Following this testimony there was a standard question and answer period in which legislators sought to satisfy their questions about charter school legislation. The following is a "question" from a legislator...

I don't know about you but I grow weary of "back in my day" monologues. Here's the deal: The "back in the day" approach is obviously not working for our schools in Kentucky. The solutions that McDaniel testified about are an option that should be considered to help solve a problem that is out of control.

It is obvious from the outset of the legislator's "question" that he knows where he is going. He continues to attack McDaniel rather than taking the opportunity to ask a subject area expert any relevant questions. What good does that do? Do our elected officials consider this productive? I would think that regardless of where they stand on the charter school debate they would respect an expert who traveled across the country by treating them with respect and learning more about the issue at debate.

Maybe that's just me.

Jefferson County busing mess: Are we getting the whole story?

It looks like a hot meeting is on the way tomorrow night at the Jefferson County Board of Education’s Vanhoose Education Center.

Fox 41 reported several days ago that parents are “Still heated over busing issues.”

But, the real news attached to that article may be a reader comment from Ms. Kerry Seelye.

Seelye isn’t a web mirage. She exists, I talked to her and she stands behind her comments.

And, Seelye’s comments hint that Jefferson County’s problems may be much more extensive than the popular media is reporting.

Seelye’s two grandchildren don’t go to any of the three schools – Lincoln, Chancey and King Elementary Schools – where all the problems supposedly occurred.

Seelye’s grandchildren go to Cochran Elementary School.

However, per Seelye, her grandchildren didn’t get home on day one of the new school year until 6:30 PM. Then, the next morning pickup bus was over an hour late, so the kids naturally arrived late to school. The evening of day two, the kids didn’t get home until 6:15 PM. Things didn’t run much better the following day; Seelye’s grandchildren still didn’t get home until 5:45 PM.

School lets out at 3:45, so those children from Cochran were trapped in a clearly dysfunctional busing operation for two hours after school let out even on day three.

Seelye tells me that on Friday, the kids didn’t make it to the drop-off until 5:30 PM. To put this in perspective, last year, Seelye says her grandchildren were dropped off by 4:05 PM.

Also, parents who could not get straight answers about when the bus would make the drop-off have been waiting outside in the hot weather, every day, starting at 4 PM.

Seelye’s comments about the herding (sorry, there is no kind way to describe it) the kids endured during their after school wait for the bus are also unsettling. The children were assembled in the gym and forced to sit on the hard floor, with no snacks or water allowed. Her grandchildren were expected to endure that abusive situation for an hour and a half until the bus finally showed up around 5:15.

If you are aware of similar busing issues in Jefferson County for other schools, let us know with a comment below. Post anonymously if you feel threatened, but posts with real names will carry more weight with our readers.

And, if you are a Louisville parent with children who have been treated like Ms. Seelye’s and you don’t show up at the board meeting tomorrow or at least send them a formal, written complaint, shame on you.

Is Ky looking forward to staying behind?

High labor costs, uncertain government policies and a lack of high-tech activity are holding Kentucky's economy back.

So says University of Kentucky professor Ken Troske, who's also a nationally recognized economic expert. Troske addresses each of these three areas in a one-on-one interview in the June 2010 edition of The Lane Report.

He especially takes issue with the commonwealth's high labor costs. Not only has Kentucky lost much its previous "labor cost advantage" as other states have become more competitive, but it's not taking the steps needed to reverse that trend.

"Other areas of the United States have compensated for higher labor costs by becoming more productive and better educated," Troske said. "These increases are not being achieved in Kentucky."

Troske recommends that government focus on "trying to lower uncertainty, costs and tax burdens" -- ideas we hear very little about from the current administrations in both Washington and Frankfort.

TEK Task Force talks up Kentucky education progress: Really?

Since shortly after KERA got going back in 1990, our educators and some state leaders have been bombarding us with claims about all the education progress we have made. It happened again this past week during the governor’s TEK Task Force regional conferences.

What, exactly, does Kentucky’s progress look like?

Given past trends, how long will it take us to get a reasonable proportion of Kentucky’s students to academic performance levels they will need to compete in the 21st Century?

To explore those questions, I assembled this graph (click on it to enlarge), which shows Kentucky proficiency rates on the most recently administered versions of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The graph shows the latest available data by grade, subject, and year. For comparison, the few State NAEP results that are available for early years of KERA in 1992 are shown as dashed red lines on the appropriate bars.


As you look at these low proficiency rates and the huge gaps still remaining to reach the sorts of proficiency rates we need, the reason why I question claims about Kentucky’s ‘great’ progress becomes obvious.

After almost two decades of KERA, Kentucky’s most recent 2009 results for math and reading show that less than one in three Kentucky eighth grade students are proficient. Even if we had started from zero proficiency at the beginning of KERA (where data is available for 1992, it is obvious we didn’t start at zero), the story captured in this graph makes it evident that, absent major changes to our education system, Kentucky will require many decades to get to the sorts of proficiency rates our kids need.

If you want to learn more about this graph and its implications, click the “Read more” link below.

Read more »

ACT Shocker: Who’s going to be your nurse or doctor?

One of the interesting reports about the Class of 2010’s newly released ACT performance is titled, “Kentucky, The Condition of College and Career Readiness, Class of 2010.” That report, just released on Wednesday, offers a number of comparisons between where our kids want to go and how well prepared – or not – they are to get there.

This graph in particular really riveted my attention. It is directly copied from the ACT report with only two embellishments: the red ellipse around the health care section and the source information text at the bottom of the figure.

This ACT graph shows that members of the Kentucky high school graduating class in 2010 who want to get into careers in health care are mostly not likely to succeed. Few scored at or above the ACT Benchmark scores that signal a student is likely to pass first year college courses in English Composition, algebra, social studies (reading) or Freshman Biology (science).


Most significantly, a depressingly low 14 percent of the students who want to get into health care have adequate mathematics preparation, and an even lower nine percent are likely to survive their first college biology course. Failing biology will be a killer for the majority of health care positions.

The numbers are not much more encouraging for the other career fields shown on the graph, either.

This is tremendously important information, because the ACT’s research indicates the career areas shown in the graph are where the majority of jobs for the Class of 2010 are likely to be found.

There just is no other way to put it: our education system is failing a tremendous percentage of our students along with all Kentuckians. Even worse, Kentucky’s future economy cannot withstand such poor performance in the state’s public schools. It’s time to get serious about real educational changes that really work for kids and not just for adults in the educational system.

Jim Waters talks school choice with Kentucky legislators

As we already reported, the Kentucky Legislature’s Interim Joint Committee on Education heard testimony on charter schools in its August meeting.

The video below has comments our own Jim Waters’ presented to the committee.

By the way, Jim’s testimony got one of the reporters at this event very upset. That reporter simply could not come to grips with the severity of the data Jim presented about the very low performance of our schools and rather rudely questioned the accuracy of Jim’s presentation. If anyone else doubts Jim’s unsettling figures, they can click on the “Read more” link below to find a detailed discussion about where these numbers, which are all directly traceable to official Kentucky Department of Education reports, come from.

Jim Waters speaks about School Choice in Frankfort, ky from freedomky on Vimeo.

Read more »

ACT Scores – Educator flunks the test

Test results for Kentucky’s 11th grade students on the ACT college entrance test have only been out a short time, but Harlan County Schools Superintendent Tim Saylor may have already won the worst-excuse-for-bad-scores contest.

Saylor takes a prize for his excuses for the extremely low ACT Composite Score of only 16.4 that his 11th grade students posted.

Click the “Read more” link below to find out why Harlan Co. needs to stop making excuses and start making some progress.

Read more »

What do you admire about Milton Friedman?

University of Kentucky's Dr. John Garen discusses what he admires about the late Milton Friedman.

Louisville's airwaves filled with concerns about busing, teachers and education

On Friday’s edition of The Values Coalition USA radio broadcast on Louisville's WLLV-AM 1240, callers spoke out about busing:



about teachers:



and about teachers unions:



I co-host the program along with Midwest Church of Christ Pastor Jerry Stephenson, who also chairs the Kentucky Educational Restoration Alliance. The show airs 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. each Friday.

Tomorrow we will discuss the latest developments on the busing fiasco and the newly released ACT scores

If you're in the area, tune in and call in. Plans are being developed to stream the program live on the Web.

Jefferson County Schools' busing mess: Child lost two days in a row

WAVE-3 has the details, including a video interview with the child’s mom, here.

This is what happens when social engineering tries to trump education in neighborhood schools.

When will the people in Louisville wake up?

Gov. hot under collar about committee's disapproval of climate warming extremists

With all the state facing budget shortfalls and laying off workers, clear thinking Kentuckians want to know: Why does Gov. Steve Beshear continue to defend using $200,000 of taxpayers' hard-earned money to fund a Washington, D.C.-based climate-warming extremist group?

Do Kentucky taxpayers really want to fund a group that already gets big bucks from leftists like George Soros? Does this governor really believe that Soros would not shut down our coal industry if he got the chance?

Public school students' ACT score drops

ACT college entrance test scores released today raise doubts about claims by education officials that Kentucky is making progress in preparing students for college and career work in the 21st century global marketplace.

Click here to read the entire News Release.

What did you think about the Governor’s TEK Forums?

As promised, here is a place to post comments about Governor Beshear’s Transforming Education in Kentucky Forums that were held around the state yesterday, August 17, 2010.

I’ll withhold my comments for a few days to let you, our valued readers, chime in.

Kentucky’s public school ACT Composite Score average dropped!

The Kentucky Department of Education just issued Press Release 10-044 with the public school only ACT-tested high school graduate scores for 2010. That allowed me to make 2010 additions to this table, which shows public school only ACT performance in Kentucky since 1993.


Note that the ACT Composite Score (an average across the four academic subjects) dropped between 2009 and 2010. There was only a very slight increase in the number of public school graduates who took the test, which makes the score reduction particularly troubling.

One piece of good news is that math scores for 2010 inched up another tenth of a point, but this was more than offset by the declines in reading and science.

In reviewing this table, keep in mind that Kentucky started testing all students with the ACT several years ago, and that is why the scores dropped dramatically in 2009.

However, the continued decline in 2010 is a bad trend. An excuse that this is due to more students taking the ACT this year is not valid because the change in the numbers is very small.

If you want to see more tables like the one above which cover the combined results for all students, public and private, in Kentucky, and even a table separately covering the performance of students in non-public education environments, we have them for you in the freedomkentucky.org Wiki here.

You can find the ACT, Incorporated's public access page with the 2010 results for all graduates combined who took the 2010 ACT here. Links on that page will take you to a variety of reports with both national and state scores.

Kentucky lags in college preparation in new ACT report

The ACT just released the results for its college entrance test for the Class of 2010. For the first time, ACT reports that a number of Southern states had at, or nearly at, 100 percent participation on this important test.

Here, broken down by race, are the percentages of the 2010 high school graduates in those four high participation states that the ACT says are ready for College English Composition.


(Source: ACT, Incorporated)

As you can see, Kentucky, which is shown by the medium blue bars, lags the pack – Yes, even Mississippi!!! – across every racial grouping, across the board. The only reason that Kentucky looks better than Mississippi when all students’ scores are averaged together (see the far right set of bars) is because Kentucky has very few minority students while the other states are much more diverse.

What makes this graph particularly disturbing is that Kentucky spent a fortune over the past 20 years to include portfolios in the state’s high stakes assessment and accountability program. Educators thought that was going to boost our kids’ performance in the English Composition area. Sadly, the fad idea of using writing portfolios in high stakes assessment clearly didn’t work out. The problem was that rules to prevent cheating on the portfolios wound up tying our writing teachers’ hands. Thus, a great instructional tool was corrupted into a detriment, not a plus. After nearly two decades of trying to make writing portfolios work in the assessment, Kentucky finally gave up in 2009. Sadly, it may take years for the bad impacts from the program to work its way out of our school system.

There are other exciting things going on in this graph. Perhaps the most remarkable concerns post-Katrina Louisiana and Mississippi. Both states took heavy damage in their Southern regions from that worst-damage-ever event, school buildings included. I already wrote about the Louisiana experience in an earlier blog, but this graph shows that even storm ravaged Mississippi is giving us a run for our money in English.

I need to point out that Kentucky did better against Tennessee and Mississippi on the other ACT tested subjects of math, reading and science, but charter-school-heavy Louisiana generally outshined us across all those other ACT academic test areas with their 2010 graduates, as well.

Excuses, excuses

Critics are good at making excuses for why Kentucky can't properly educate our children and why charter schools won't work even though credible research and proven results indicate otherwise.

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

Louisiana Verses Kentucky on the new ACT scores: A charter school miracle?

This is a story about what happened in Louisiana after hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. It relates to the new ACT college entrance test results released today for the Class of 2010 and could indicate that strong charter school programs can rapidly build a state’s education infrastructure and performance.


What does a hurricane have to do with charter schools and college test scores? Click the “Read more” link below to find out.

Read more »

Kentucky’s ACT scores remain flat, and low

The ACT, Incorporated publicly released the ACT college entrance test results for the Class of 2010 today. The numbers include all students from public, private and home schools and are different from the numbers reported last week. Last week's numbers only covered the results for 11th grade public school students tested in Kentucky.

Kentucky’s ACT Composite Score for all graduates remained at 19.4, the same as last year. Because 100 percent of Kentucky’s graduates took the ACT in both years, and because the number of graduates taking the ACT in Kentucky only rose by a few hundred students (from 45,419 in 2009 to 45,763 this year), this isn’t good news. Along with a lot of our educators and legislators, I expected at least a little rise in scores.

What is news is the fact that more states experienced at, or near, 100 percent participation of their graduates on the ACT this year, including three other Southern states. This is an important development, because in the past ACT participation by state has varied widely, making it difficult to do any meaningful state-to-state comparisons. Now, with the high participation states on a more even playing field, it is possible to do more worthwhile comparisons.

This graph shows the ACT Composite score for all the high participation rate states in 2010. All the states shown had at least a 96 percent rate of participation for their graduates on the ACT.


The first thing Kentuckians will notice is that we are pretty far down in the “stack” in 2010 for our ACT Composite Score. This includes trailing two Southern states, Tennessee (where 100 percent of the students tested) and Louisiana (where 98 percent tested).

Perhaps the most remarkable story in this graph involves Louisiana. The state was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, but it now has the next best scores behind the two original states to adopt 100 percent testing with the ACT. I’m going to have more to say about Louisiana in subsequent posts.

By the way, back in 2002 when Illinois and Colorado first started reporting scores for classes that had 100 percent ACT participation, their scores were about half a point lower than they are now. Hopefully, Kentucky will see some growth in the future just like happened in Colorado and Illinois.

ACT should soon release a series of reports, including some that focus on Kentucky, in their web site later today. Once those specific links appear, I’ll pick them up in later posts. So, stay tuned, as there will be at least three more blogs on this important score release.

Jefferson County schools first day busing fiasco

Any parent could have told the educators at Jefferson County Public Schools that trying to tag five-year olds as a way to track them in the school district’s monster school busing program was going to be a mess.

On day one of the new school year, it was.

Read the latest on this huge social engineering plan gone crazy in the Courier-Journal.

A dozen kids didn’t finally get home until 9 PM. Four hundred more didn’t get to their homes until after 6 PM.

The district clearly lost control of some students as even kids considerably older than five had problems. The Courier says Amelia Rodriguez told them that when she tried to find out what had happened to her 10-year-old daughter, the district personnel asked her to tell them if she finally showed up!

What a great introduction to school for these kids!

I hope the judge who threw out the lawsuit against this mess last week is paying attention. Fortunately, the parents in that suit say they are going to appeal. After what happened yesterday, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a whole lot more parents jump on board the court action.

EFCA: Good for unions, bad for business

There are many aspects to the misnamed "Employee Free Choice Act." The "card check" aspect of the policy -- which denies workers the right to vote by secret ballot on whether to become unionized -- is the most symbolic aspect of how this policy would diminish individual liberty and create an uneven playing field in business.

But there are other aspects to the proposed policy as well, such as the onerous regulations that allow government arbitrators to unilaterally decide companies' wage and working policies.



Reps. John Yarmuth, D-Louisville, and Ben Chandler, D-Lexington, who voted for this bill the last time it came up in Congress (it didn't pass), should talk to the small-business owners in their districts before making the same mistake twice. In doing so, they will discover: This policy might be good for labor unions, but it's bad for business.

Thanks to Rachel Bledsoe and Tyler Glick of the Coalition to Protect Kentucky Jobs for producing the video.

New school district check registers available

By way of Operation: Open Records 2010 we have posted some new school district check registers.  These check registers are available on our sortable database where you can search for expenses in fiscal year 2010 by date, amount, description of expense, etc...

Recently added:

• Laurel County Schools
• Whitley County Schools
• Warren County Schools

Glance through these expenses, it is your tax money anyway.  This is one expense in the Laurel County Schools check register I found that I have questions about...

It could be completely legitimate but when I see numbers like this spent at a hotel by a school district spread out over the course of a year, I think we owe it to ourselves to keep an eye on it.  I mean come on, $16,300.43 is a lot of money in hotels especially when you consider that this is just one of the hotels on the list.  There are others in the check register.

What do you think?

Commissioner’s blog lays out tough numbers about Kentucky’s education performance

Education Commissioner Terry Holliday and his staff are really starting to tell it like it is with Kentucky’s public education system.

As I reported recently, this month’s meeting of the Kentucky Board of Education contained lots of hard-hitting facts about where the state really stands in making education progress.

Now, Commissioner Holliday adds to the candor with more sobering facts about education in Kentucky. His blog from August 13, 2010, “The Class of 2010, What Does Their Future Look Like?” uses the most recently available data on high school graduation rates and college success rates to project what will happen to Kentucky’s new group of graduating students.

This table summarizes Dr. Holliday’s sobering projections for this group of students.



To learn more about the disturbing numbers in this table, click the "Read more" link below.

Read more »

KIPP Charter School principal briefs Kentucky legislators on charter schools

In this video, Tracy McDaniel, the principal of the KIPP Reach College Preparatory School in Oklahoma City briefs legislators on the Interim Joint Education Committee about charter schools and what they can offer.

Tracy Mcdaniel, principle of KIPP school in Oklahoma from freedomky on Vimeo.

Gov. Beshear invites Kentuckians to TEK Talk forums

From the Governor’s news release:

FRANKFORT, Ky.– In an effort to boost support of public education in the Commonwealth, Governor Steve Beshear and First Lady Jane Beshear will host TEK Talk community forums on Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2010. Kentuckians are invited to gather at 10 locations across the state to discuss Transforming Education in Kentucky (TEK). Gov. Beshear created the TEK initiative last fall to focus current education programs toward the unified goal of better preparing Kentucky students for success in the 21st century.

“The world has dramatically changed since the education reforms of 1990,” said Gov. Beshear. “Today, I’m calling on our communities to recommit new energy and provide new input for innovative strategies that will ensure the future of our children.”

Gov. Beshear is working in partnership with the Education and Workforce Development Cabinet, the Kentucky Department of Education, the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE), the Prichard Committee, the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, NewCities Institute and Kentucky Educational Television to provide this opportunity for the public to share its concerns and ideas.


Check the news release link above for the locations and contact phone numbers for the 10 regional discussion locations. Those discussions start at 7 PM Eastern Daylight Time/6PM Central Time.

If you can’t make it to one of the regional locations, KET will broadcast a summary of the event at 8 PM Eastern/7PM Central Time on the 17th. There will be repeat broadcasts by KET at later dates, per the news release, and it will be live streamed and then available in web accessible archives, as well.

We'll set up blog items after the event where you can comment on your impressions.

Kentucky’s 11th Grade ACT testing report contains surprises

Hints at unequal educational opportunities and minority out-migration from Kentucky

The new 2010 report on the testing of all Kentucky 11th grade students with the ACT college entrance test has been released. I’ve already posted two blogs on overall score results for all students.

Now, I’m going to shift focus to how the minorities performed. There is both good and bad news here along with some real surprises and reasons for concern.

Among those surprises and concerns –

• The number of Hispanics in 11th grade dropped in the past two years, going against all sorts of reports we have received about Hispanic migration rising in Kentucky.
• Kentucky’s 11th grade got notably “whiter” in the past two years as minority counts in the ACT testing for American Indian/Alaskan Natives, Hispanics, and Asian-American/Pacific Islanders all dropped.
• Kentucky’s black students are enrolling in courses needed for college preparation in much lower percentages than other racial groups.


To learn much more, and to see the data, click the “Read more” link below.

Read more »

Gov. Beshear: Honor the people's wishes

The Bluegrass Institute celebrates the decision by the Government Contract Review Committee to express unanimous disapproval of forcing Kentucky taxpayers to spend $200,000 on a contract that allows the Kentucky Climate Action Plan Council, a front group for the radical, Washington, D.C.-based Center for Climate Strategies.

The institute led the way in shining the light on this extremist, albeit legislatively quiet, group.

This panel allows no debate or questioning of climate warming assumptions at its meetings at the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet.

It's good to know that sane, competent lawmakers in Frankfort don't think forcing taxpayers to contribute to a George Soros-funded project is such a good idea. We're hoping the Beshear administration will honor the people's wishes, which would certainly be evidence of political climate change in Frankfort.

Real or fake government spending projects?

Check out this great video about federal spending projects.  A great display of the absurdity of the "stimulus"...



Have an example of a ridiculous government spending project? Learn how to share it here!

Kentucky’s 11th Grade ACT test scores are up slightly

A new report from the Kentucky Department of Education lists results for this year’s full testing of all 11th grade students on the ACT college entrance test. I blogged yesterday on how our students performed against the ACT Benchmark Scores that indicate good college preparation. That discussion showed we have a very, very long way to go.

Today, let’s look at the ACT Composite Score results.

In a bit of good news, while scores remain well below what is desirable, they are inching up a bit for most of the student groups reported.


The top part of this table, which comes from the Kentucky Department of Education’s news release 10-043 about the scores, shows the only exception of note to the general progress in scores is for Hispanics, who made no improvement from 2009 to 2010.

Things are a less satisfactory in the area of the achievement gaps, shown below the blue line in the table. I computed these from the KDE score data shown above the blue line in the table.

Kentucky’s largest minority group, the African-Americans, lost a little ground to the whites in the scoring gap for 2010 versus 2009. So did the Hispanics. However, the gaps in 2010 for both these racial groups are not as large as they were in 2008. Still, the gaps shown here are substantial, indicating that we have a lot of work to do to provide good educations to our minority students.

On another happy note, whites closed their gap a little with Kentucky’s always academically superior Asian American/Pacific Islander group.

I will probably have more comments once I get a chance to review the full set of data from the department of education, which you can also access here.

By the way, full ACT testing of all 11th grade students started in 2008 as a result of Senate Bill 130 from the 2006 regular legislative session. The Bluegrass Institute supported the policy of class-wide testing of 11th grade students with the ACT and of eighth and 10th grade students with coordinated tests from ACT for several reasons.

• We wanted more reliable information about how our schools were doing in getting students ready for follow-on higher education studies,
• We hoped that adding these tests to our accountability system would encourage schools to become more focused on college preparation,
• We also hoped that some bright students who were not considering college would be encouraged to do so, and finally,
• We hoped that students who needed more work and assistance would learn about their deficiencies in time to improve.

The slow inching up of scores indicates that the desired effects are starting to appear even though the rate of progress is far slower than desired.

Kentucky’s 11th Grade ACT test scores are up slightly

But, performance remains very low compared to what we need

A new report from the Kentucky Department of Education lists results for this year’s full testing of all 11th grade students on the ACT college entrance test. Scores are up a bit for most of the student groups reported. However, compared to the ACT benchmark scores that indicate students are fully prepared for entry level college courses, this figure from the ACT Profile Report (with some numbers enlarged for easier reading) shows we have a very, very long way to go in getting reasonable numbers of Kentucky’s high school students ready for college.


For example, the far left bar shows only 49 percent, less than one of two, of Kentucky 11th grade students in 2010 had adequate preparation for freshman college English composition, a course just about universally required at all institutions of higher learning. The second bar from the left indicates only 22 percent are on track for College Algebra, generally about the lowest level college math course offered at most institutions. In the area of reading, only 35 percent are ready for a college social studies course’s reading demands, and in the science area, a scant 15 percent will likely be ready for freshman biology.

Overall, the last bar indicates only 11 percent of the 11th grade class in Kentucky in 2010 is ready across all four subject areas. This 11 percent figure is unchanged from 2009 and is only one point higher than in 2008.

Sadly, preparation for minority groups is generally much worse. Figure 3.5 in the Profile Summary Report shows only two percent of African-American 11th grade students this past school term are ready for college in all four subjects. That is unchanged from the two percent figure reported in the Profile Summary Report from 2008, which is the first year Kentucky did 100 percent ACT testing of all 11th grade students.

The ACT provides important insight into how Kentucky’s school system is performing, and there are a lot of ACT results to discuss in the next few days, so stay tuned.

Education committee lawmaker: It's time to think outside the box, give parents choice of charters

Rep. Jim DeCesare, R-Bowling Green, told WKCT-AM 930 "DriveTime" host Chad Young that our current public education system is not working.

"Why shouldn't we think outside the box?" DeCesare asked Young following Monday's Interim Joint Education Committee meeting in Frankfort.



DeCesare is a member of the joint education committee. The Bluegrass Institute and Kentucky Educational Restoration Alliance (KERA) provided both written and oral testimony at Monday's hearing.

(Note: If the link above does not work with your browser, click here)

New Department of Education Strategic Plan pays attention to achievement gaps

New accountability program will include assessment of gap performance

The Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) made a lot of comments about the state’s endemic achievement gaps during the Kentucky Board of Education’s August meeting and retreat.

This discussion started with Associate Commissioner Ken Draut’s presentation during the retreat part of the meeting. Ken provided a nice review of the many different performance gaps for student groups in Kentucky using a detailed, 25-page handout titled “Academic Performance Data.” This handout is available in two parts, Part 1, with Pages 1 to 19, and Part 2, with Pages 20 to 25.

Ken’s handouts have lots of data on the gaps from such indicators as the Kentucky Core Content Tests, graduation rates (using the credible Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate formula instead of our old, inflated calculation), the ACT college entrance test and the ACT’s EXPLORE and PLAN tests and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

I capture just a small amount of Ken’s presentation in these two graphs, which show the gaps on the Kentucky Core Content Test (KCCT) in reading and mathematics.


Several things stand out in the reading graph. First, Asian students do notably better than whites at all school levels, but the trend gets more favorable to Asians in the upper grades. What do we need to harness from our Asian students and transplant to our whites?

Note, as well, that in Kentucky Hispanic-white gaps are notably lower than African-American to white gaps. However, the Limited English Proficiency (LEP) student’s gaps are much worse than the African-American to white gaps. Only students with learning disabilities have larger gaps.

Also notice that the gaps by racial group vary dramatically.

Here is the graph for mathematics.


The trends are generally similar, with one added note. The KCCT’s Female Vs. Male gaps in Kentucky favor females, which is definitely not what we find in other testing such as the NAEP, where males in Kentucky do better than the females. The differences are small for the sexes, but there may be an indication here of potential bias in the KCCT results by sex.

In any event, it is clear from the graphs above and the very extensive data presented in Academic Performance Data that Kentucky needs to pay attention to its persistent education gaps. Thus, it is good to see that gaps are a specific highlight area in the state’s strategic plan, which I mentioned in an earlier blog. It is also good to hear that the department intends to include a separate metric for gaps in the state’s new public school accountability program.

Labor and learning: Keys to Kentucky's future

Outdated labor laws and an inferior education system offer a bleak forecast for Kentucky's economic future.

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

Kentucky Board of Education 4-5 August meeting webcasts now on line

What is the Prichard Committee fussing about?

I finally have a moment to advise you that the webcasts of the Kentucky Board of Education retreat and meetings held on August 4 and 5 are now archived for viewing. You can access the webcasts in either full video or audio only (suggested for slower bandwidth connections) formats using these links:

8/4/2010: archived video and audio


8/4/2010: downloadable audio podcast


8/5/2010: archived video and audio


8/5/2010: downloadable audio podcast


Lisa Gross at the Kentucky Department of Education sent out the link to these webcasts early on August 6th, but I’ve been too busy to get this out to you.

Which leads to my surprise about a whiny comment the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence made in a blog post on the afternoon of August 6th.

Prichard fusses that the Kentucky Department of Education’s new strategic plan for education – discussed in detail at the board meeting – with a Power Point available on line from the department of education here – doesn’t have any public-friendly visuals.

Well, that’s silly.

I blogged about this lead visual days ago on August 5th, mentioning that more information would be coming.


You can find a lot more explanation of the plan in an hour and a half long, illustrated discussion included in the webcast from August 4th. That starts at 45 minutes and 35 seconds into the webcast if you don’t want to listen to the entire meeting. And, if Prichard had just checked the links in this blog from Education Commissioner Terry Holliday, they would have found the full Power Point presentation on the strategic plan that I mention, and link to, above, as well.

How much more user-friendly can you get about a plan that doesn't lend itself to a trivialized, one-page description?

As a note, Prichard posted their fussy blog item at 3:45 PM on August 6th. The department of education sent out its links to the webcast at 8:09 AM on August 6th. Commissioner Holliday already had the link to the strategic plan Power Point in his blog that Prichard referenced to create their whiny post in the first place.

So what is really going on here? Could it be that Prichard is upset because they didn’t personally get a hand-holding, special briefing after they failed to show up for the board’s meetings?

Anyway, I think the education department has done a very nice job of getting the message out about the strategic plan, which, after all is said and done, may not boil down well into an overly simplistic, one page discussion.

We'll look at some specifics from the strategic plan briefing in future posts.

Talking charter schools

As we mentioned earlier the Kentucky Legislature’s Interim Joint Committee on Education held hearings on August 9, 2010 on charter schools and what they might bring to the commonwealth.

We shot lots of video of the event, as did another blogger, and we will be posting those in the next couple of days.

In addition, the Bluegrass Institute also hosted a small roundtable discussion with several charter school experts

• Tracy McDaniel, president of the KIPP Reach College Preparatory School in Oklahoma City
• Kenneth Campbell, president of the Black Alliance for Educational Options

and several members of our coalition to bring charter schools to Kentucky, including:

• Jerry Stephenson, pastor of the Midwest Church of Christ in Louisville
• Jim Waters, vice president for Policy and Communications at the Bluegrass Institute
• Kelly Smith, Vice President for Strategic Partnerships at the Bluegrass Institute, and
• Myself, Richard Innes, Education Analyst for the Bluegrass Institute.

Some of the interesting answers to our questions from the charter school experts are available for you here.

Contract review committee denies funding for extremist environmental group

A state legislative oversight committee today voted to disapprove renewing the contract of the controversial Kentucky Climate Action Panel.

Click here to read the entire News Release.

Learn more about the Kentucky Climate Action Panel here.

Dr. Eric Schansberg on Milton Friedman

Dr. Eric Schansberg discusses how he believes Milton Friedman would view the current economic climate.  This video was taken from the "What would Friedman do?" event at the University of Louisville, hosted by the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, on July 30, 2010.

Dr. Eric Schansberg - July 2010 from freedomky on Vimeo.

Charter schools get hearing in Frankfort

School choice supporters told state lawmakers today that charter schools offer the kind of innovation that could bring true reform to Kentucky’s education system.

Click here to read the entire News Release.

Jefferson County busing plan hits court

(Updated with graph 7 Aug 10)

With the count of parents who have joined the lawsuit against the incredibly bad busing plan in Louisville now up to 13, the case is finally in court.


Per the Courier-Journal, the court discussion gravitated towards a discussion of the performance of Jefferson County schools and why parents are unhappy. One example listed was a comparison of the Dunn and King Elementary Schools.

The news report says that parent attorney J. Bruce Miller “insinuated” that King Elementary is inferior, citing as an example numerous spelling and grammar mistakes available for public view in the school’s web site.

Well, there’s no need to insinuate. The performance in these two schools is dramatically different, as the most recent proficiency rates in the five Kentucky Core Content Test subjects in this graph show (I assembled the graph from data in each school’s Interim Performance Report for 2009, available with the menus presented here).


Very simply, the performance gaps in proficiency rates in these two schools are quite dramatic.

The 2009 No Child Left Behind results for the two schools are also dramatically different. Dunn’s 2009 NCLB Adequate Yearly Progress Report shows it met all nine of its targets and thus met Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). King’s report shows it only met 8 of 12 targets, a rather low performance of only 66.7 percent. King failed to make AYP in 2009. It also failed to make AYP in 2008. Find each school's 2009 NCLB report with the menus provided here.

However, King is not in NCLB Tier status due to a serious loophole that the Jefferson County busing plan has exposed. When the enrollment in a school changes by 20 percent or more, that school’s NCLB “counter” gets reset to zero. So, instead of King being in Tier 1 status for failing to make AYP two years in a row, it isn’t in any NCLB trouble.



I’ve written about how busing has shredded NCLB in Jefferson County before, but I would not be surprised if the lawyer for the school district or its superintendent tries to fool the public by claiming the district has reduced the schools in NCLB Tier status. I suspect it has, but that is only because of this loophole that busing can seriously exploit.

There was more nonsense in the Courier’s report, and you can click the “Read more” link below to learn about that.

Read more »

Kevin Brown - What is the Education Political Environment in Kentucky?

Kentucky Department of Education Associate Commissioner and General Counsel Kevin Brown discusses the groups that influence public education in the state with the Kentucky Board of Education on August 4, 2010.

Education Commissioner unveils new strategic plan

Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday unveiled his new strategic plan for the Kentucky Board of Education during the August 4th and 5th meeting. Here is the overview from his presentation of how that looks:

Read more »

Kentucky rates a D for protecting your private property

Did you know civil forfeiture law permits seizure of your property without you being charged with a crime?

Kentucky gets a "D" for protecting your property.



Federal law allows law enforcement to circumvent the limited protections of state laws. Local law enforcement officials also often get to keep proceeds obtained from these forfeitures, which creates incentives that -- not surprisingly -- could lead to abuse.

Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture should be a wakeup call to all of us.

Are you concerned now?

New Kentucky Board of Education members, returning members get high quality introductory briefings

The Kentucky Board of Education held its first meeting with its five recently appointed members, and the Department of Education Staff did a really nice job with a series of morning briefings on the state of education in the state.

Three main areas were covered in the morning briefings:

• Academic performance and plans for future school and district report cards
• Fiscal environment
• Political environment

I was pleased by the level of candor and information in these very worthwhile, 45 minute presentations.


The Bluegrass Institute was even singled out in the political environment discussions as the department’s example of groups advocating for education policies. That presentation also provided the board members with copies of Professor John Garen’s recent Bluegrass Institute Perspective on “Introducing more choices in education.”

Clearly, the department considers the institute as part of the important landscape in Kentucky.

The afternoon meeting was kicked off with a top-notch Power Point briefing by Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday about the strategic plan for education in the commonwealth. Once again, the honesty and candor were very welcome.

These various briefings covered a lot of specific information, some of which I’ll cover in future blogs. But, one item that I have been campaigning on for a long time now seems to be settled: As I have been pointing out for years, most recently only a few days ago, the graduation rate the department has been reporting is considerably higher than what we will see once high accuracy information becomes available in 2013. The Department of Education now admits that. Commissioner Holliday and others warned the board that we will indeed see the current graduation rate drop by about 10 points once more accurate reporting starts. Holliday estimates that the true graduation rate is only in the low 70 percent region (which clearly is not the 84 percent area the department previously has been reporting).

The Commissioner and other staff members also confirmed that the department is going to switch next year to the Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate formula that the US Department of Education and yours truly have been pushing. Because this is a much more accurate estimation formula than Kentucky’s old one, the Commissioner warned that rates reported in 2011 will also be much lower than before.

It’s taken too long to happen, but it looks like the department under Commissioner Holliday’s lead is starting to get really serious about assembling and analyzing higher quality data on education. That can only bode good things in the future for Kentucky’s students.

One sad note was that board member C.B. Akins was absent due to recent, very serious surgery. We at the institute wish him a speedy recovery.

School choice: The free market in education

Today's commentary comes from the Bluegrass Audio Archives. This editorial on school choice originally aired in February 2009, but its message that competition is the right prescription to improve Kentucky schools remains relevant.

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

Operation: Open Records 2010 enhancements!

There has been quite a bit of activity on FreedomKentucky.org since Operation: Open Records 2010 started at the beginning of the summer!  We have started adding some charts and icons to better translate the responsiveness and information found as a result of the vast number of open records requests we have been conducting.

Charts, like the one below, are intended to help track the process of the request.  They will contain information related to what the request is, date, if it was responded to in the legally required three business days, if the information was obtained in the requested format, and if the institution/department dealt with was helpful. Here is an example:
 

In addtion, icons will accompany each request that will indicate the status of the request:

Hopefully, these will enhance the experience of Operation: Open Records 2010!  You can see examples here!