Wanting low standards in Louisville

Jefferson County Board of Education member Linda Duncan is one confused lady.

She writes in the Courier-Journal that she is upset because the state’s educators want kids to at least score “Proficient” in math and reading on the state’s assessments.

Ms. Duncan mistakenly thinks the level of performance considered “Proficient” as determined by Frankfort is somehow equivalent to the much higher, but necessary, level of performance defined by the National Center of Education Statistics and the National Assessment Governing Board for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

Where did Ms. Duncan get such a completely wrong idea? Soon to be departing Jefferson County superintendent Sheldon Berman, perhaps?

In fact, the low level of student performance required to reach “Proficient” in Kentucky’s testing program is NOTHING like the requirements to be scored “Proficient” in the NAEP.

We discuss this extensively in our new reports on KERA @ 20, available here.

Here is Figure 8 from the full report. This shows how seriously inflated Kentucky’s fourth grade reading proficiency rate has become in comparison to reported rates based on higher standards for the NAEP. NAEP proficiency rates are shown by the dark blue bars, while the reading proficiencies reported by Kentucky’s KIRIS (to 1998) and CATS testing (actually from the CATS Kentucky Core Content Tests, or KCCT, from 1999 on) are shown by the pink bars.


Notice how the proficiency rates from Kentucky’s tests exploded over the years. Kentucky’s fourth grade reading proficiency rates now run over twice as high as those reported for the same students by the NAEP.

Clearly, the CATS KCCT for reading has become grossly inflated. And, the CATS KCCT proficiency standard is NOTHING like the NAEP’s.

Still, even though Kentucky set low standards for itself – nothing like NAEP’s – Ms. Duncan is whining.

Ms. Duncan, please read our reports and get better informed. The kids in Louisville are depending upon you to do a better job, but your letter shows you are not doing your homework.

Northern Kentucky Chamber: Schools failing to prepare students for jobs of the future

Comments from the lead article in this Sunday’s Business Section of the Kentucky Enquirer are stunning.

“Even as the region’s unemployment rate remains stubbornly high, well-paying jobs across Northern Kentucky and Greater Cincinnati have gone unfilled.

‘Employers are telling us that they can’t get the employees they need because the local work force doesn’t have the proper skills,’ says Steve Stevens, president of the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce. ‘That’s a story we’ve been hearing for a while. We have to begin to move the needle on this.’”

“The talent gap, Stevens says, is the direct result of the failure of public schools across the region to prepare students for the jobs of the future.”

Changes the NKY Chamber would like:

• More business practices in the school system to enhance accountability and raise the performance bar

• Merit pay for teachers

• More superintendent control of principal hiring (which requires changes to the SBDM rules)

• Districts working more effectively together

• A better plan for innovative processes (the lack of which caused us the loss of Race to the Top money)

• More business-education collaboration

• Moving beyond acceptance of the status quo

The full, thought-provoking article should be mandatory reading for everyone in Kentucky. It certainly provides dramatic support for many of the comments made in the Bluegrass Institute’s recently released set of reports about what we have learned about KERA in the past 20 years (access here).

I don’t know if the N KY Chamber folks had a chance to read our reports before the Enquirer ran their article, but I know they’ve heard a lot of the information in the reports before, from me. I’m a NKY Chamber member and serve on its education committee.

Quote of the Day: Teachers unions or kids?

"State policymakers who have kowtowed to the KEA now have a choice to make. They can continue to do the bidding of the teachers' unions and punish Kentucky's children, or they can tell the teachers' unions to start looking out for the good of students, teachers, and schools by approving charter schools." --Martin Cothran, The Family Foundation senior policy analyst.

Saying 'no' to pork one vote at a time

Kentucky's senior senator didn't apologize for the buckets of Washington-produced pork he's brought back to the commonwealth throughout his long tenure in Washington. But he does recognize that "the abuse of this practice has caused Americans to view it as a symbol of the waste and the out-of-control spending that every Republican in Washington is determined to fight." That's about all you can ask for from a politician who's spent more than a quarter-century in Washington.

Click here to read the latest Bluegrass Beacon.

Should the 17th Amendment be repealed?

Chris Derry, Bluegrass Institute founder and board member, had a letter published in Sunday's Bowling Green Daily News offering an argument for repealing the 17th Amendment, which changed the process for electing United States senators.

Previously senators were elected by state legislatures; now, of course, they are chosen by popular vote.

Give the article a read and let us know: Do you agree or disagree?

“KERA at 20” reports will be living documents

As regular readers already know, the Bluegrass Institute released a major set of reports about Kentucky’s 20-year history with KERA on Monday, November 22, 2010. One, “KERA (1990-2010): What have we learned?” is a full-length report, and the second, “KERA@20,” is a quicker reading “Commentary” on some of the key points in the main report plus more information.

You can access both from our freedomkentucky.org Wiki KERA Portal page.

You can also find more in the Portal.

One of the challenges in creating these reports was deciding what we didn’t have space to cover. We just couldn’t fit everything in to a reasonably sized report.

Also, the reports are not intended to be just dull history, but rather they offer policy-makers and citizens background to inform future decisions as we move forward with Kentucky education.

Thus, we intend that the reports will “live” through additions to the KERA Portal page. You will want to check there for updates to the “See Also” section of the portal.

You can check there now for some early additions on such topics as how Kentucky’s assessment history has cautions for the two efforts under way now to create new Common Core State Assessments (articles titled “SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium” and “Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC)”). We see potential danger that both those efforts could be repeating mistakes we made in Kentucky, and we’d like our educators to avoid them.

We’ll be adding another link soon to an already existing article about how Kentucky’s teachers didn’t get a fair share of the huge increase in spending that took place after KERA was enacted in 1990, so stay in touch.

And, once you have read our reports, if you think we need to add something else (e.g. parent involvement has already been mentioned), let us know. And, don’t forget, with the freedomkentucky.org Wiki, you can even add articles yourself. If you think your article, or any other existing article, needs to be listed on the KERA Portal page, let us know.

CATS fiction continues

Let’s get this clear.

There is no CATS accountability program in Kentucky anymore. There hasn’t been one since early 2009.

The CATS assessment program was thrown out by Senate Bill 1 during the Kentucky Legislature’s 2009 Regular Legislative Session when legislators realized that CATS and its academic tests were not giving us accurate information about how well kids were being prepared for college and careers – in other words, the things that really matter. CATS was just generating ‘feel good’ numbers.

Sadly, the official, legislative recognition that the CATS accountability program was a failure didn’t stop some members of the “KERA Amen Chorus” from fabricating their own numbers. These are unofficial numbers from a private group. They are not from an authorized, formal accountability program. And, they are based on tests that are being phased out – for cause – as rapidly as possible.

But, that isn’t stopping some school systems from making all sorts of misleading claims that they are still making progress with CATS.

Case in point is covered in this Casey County News article about Liberty Elementary School.

Nowhere in this article does it explain the truth – These are not CATS accountability index scores at all. Those index scores don't exist anymore.

The school is crowing about a private ranking scheme that is totally dependent upon dubious scores from a discredited set of tests. If the school were at least honest with the public about what these “accountability indexes” really are, I wouldn’t be so upset.

But, apparently, the school isn’t telling anyone that their index was generated by an unofficial, private ranking scheme that has never been approved by any official entity.

What do accountable care organizations mean for Kentucky health care?

This week, Norton Health Care and Humana joined to create Louisville's first accountable care organization, referred to more commonly as an ACO.

The new Louisville ACO is one of four sites selected to be a part of a pilot program conducted by the Brookings Institution and The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice.

So what does the mean for Kentucky health care?
The ACOs are a response to the gigantically intrusive health care reform law passed last May. They are defined as "a related set of providers ... that can be held accountable for the cost and quality of care delivered to a defined population."

Proponents tout that ACOs are "innovative" and will work to improve care and preventative services. However, not all health experts hold the same view.

The Heritage Foundation reported in August that ACOs force consolidation and "would prompt more doctors in small-group practices to leave medicine altogether."

John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis wrote in The Heartland Institute's November's edition of Health Care News that the main problem with an ACO is the fact that the "patient is not the customer."

"The third-party payer is the [real customer]," Goodman writes. "The ACO is not trying to meet your needs. It's trying to meet the third-party payer's needs."

In order to improve true health care quality, we need a patient-centered approach to medicine. When a third-party gets involved, patient treatment and needs will be neglected.

Time will tell just what the impact of the new Louisville ACO on Kentucky's health care system will be, but for now, the prognosis to "fix" health care this way does not look good.

Dr. Paul takes the Tea Party to Washington

On November 2, in perhaps the biggest victory for the Tea Party, Dr. Paul of Bowling Green won the race for U.S. Senate. Senator-elect Paul of Bowling Green has not left the Tea Party message in Kentucky. In fact, he's taking the entire Tea Party with him to the nation's capital.

Paul's publisher, Center Street, issued a release saying he is writing a book that will be released in February, The Tea Party Goes to Washington.

Center Street reports that the book will outline Paul's strategy and the Tea Party message "to bring government more in line with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, to stop spending money the country doesn't have, to stop borrowing, to balance the budget and reduce the size of government."

Let's hope the message of this book produces the changes we need in Washington with the new Congress and beyond. We anticipate it also will have a ripple effect across the states, including Kentucky.

Quote of the day: Education reform

"Enacting reform is difficult. There is a huge difference between the theory of reform and the reality of it -- it is a lot harder than it looks. It requires full transparency, unyielding tenacity, continuous communication, relentless advocacy, and the courage to measure progress and then deal with the results, whatever they may be." --Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida

REL Appalachia webinar shows Louisville educators are wrong

Changing principals and teachers is part of successful school turnarounds

I tuned in to a very interesting REL Appalachia webinar not long ago about “KY Turning Around Low-Performing Schools.”

The featured presenter, Ms. Kathy Fields, who is the Lead Instructional Administrator in the Jessamine County Public School District in Kentucky, discussed her successful program to turn around the West Jessamine Middle School. She did such a great job that I called her after the program to learn more.

West Jessamine steadily lost ground under NCLB and was listed as a Tier 4 school (Old nomenclature – five years of failing) when Ms. Fields moved in to turn things around.

As you can see in her Power Point presentation, her turnaround program was very extensive. It included lots of teacher help that almost amounted to fully reeducating the teachers in the school about how to teach effectively.

Fields’ program included something more, something that educators in Louisville recently proved they don’t understand, or simply don’t want to admit.

The West Jessamine Middle School turnaround did include the removal of the principal. It also removed 11 (about 20 percent) of the teachers in the school who – after being given an opportunity and assistance to improve – simply would not, or could not, adjust to what really works for children.

The removed teachers displayed both attitudes and ineptitude.

One obstructionist teacher defiantly declared he wasn’t going to take direction from a woman!

Another teacher initially refused to create lesson plans, and never did learn how to create them acceptably.

Tenured teachers were moved elsewhere in the system, where at least one did quite well once placed in a lower grade level school that was a better skills match. Non-tenured teachers were let go.

Read more »

No, the goal in NAEP is NOT for kids to score only “Basic”

Education apologists in Kentucky still refuse to admit it, but a lot of experts now understand that our education system needs to strive for much higher student performance than we are currently getting.

Certainly, as I recently blogged, the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress, makes that clear with their very simple and easy to understand statement below.


The governing board doesn’t consider the lower score of NAEP “Basic” to be a suitable performance target. NAEP “Basic” only signifies partial mastery of subject material. Per the board, that’s not good enough. “Proficient” is the goal, and nothing less.

But, education ‘status quo’ers’ like Jefferson County Teachers Association president Brent McKim don’t get that. They don’t want you to know it, either.

Offering up a big smoke screen of nonsense that mistakes what is for what needs to be, McKim told the Kentucky Tonight audience on Monday that NAEP “Basic” is fine target. Basically, McKim claimed that partial subject mastery is an acceptable target for him.

Well, setting unrealistically low education goals only works for status quo educators who don’t have a clue about what our kids are going to need to compete in the increasingly more competitive world economy.

However, setting unrealistically low goals is not in line with what the people who actually run the national assessment are telling us. So, one last time, the people who govern the NAEP have spoken, and they are telling us to shoot for NAEP “Proficient,” not something less.

New Bluegrass Institute report shows KY educators can’t tell mediocre from remarkable

It’s really disappointing.

Key Kentucky educators constantly try to tell us about all the remarkable progress that has been made in our schools. Sadly, that clearly isn’t correct.

Here is a graph from our recently released KERA @ 20 report that guts those educator claims.

This graph shows the most recent proficiency rates for math and reading in fourth and eighth grade from the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). It also shows the most recent proficiency rate for our eighth graders on NAEP writing, last given in 2007.


As you can see, after almost two decades of KERA activity in our schools, only about one in three students scored proficient in reading and math in fourth grade. For eighth grade math and writing, the proficiency rate is even lower, only about one in four students.

This is all our educators have been able to achieve in the past two decades of expensive reform efforts. So, it is very obvious that it will take many decades more decades to get to the proficiency levels our kids need, given the depressingly low rate of progress to date that only produced the mediocre results shown in the graph.

I’m not the only one who is fed up with the low academic performance of Kentucky’s students. Yesterday, the Jefferson County Board of Education gave Sheldon Berman, the district school principal, his walking papers, effective at the end of the school term.

In explaining that action today to Louisville’s popular WHAS Radio talk show host, Mandy Connell, Jefferson County board chair Debbie Westlund said the board wants a change in focus to emphasize academics. Clearly, Westlund and her board understand graphs like the one above, and its important implications for children, a lot better than the high-paid professional educator they hired.

Read more »

Now Kentucky is in the business of 'ordering' private companies?

Kentucky's Insurance Commissioner Sharon P. Clark has decided that the decision by insurance companies in the commonwealth to discontinue the writing of new child-only policies because of increased regulations is unacceptable. So she's 'ordering' these companies to continue selling them.

This story is not new to the Bluegrass Institute. Jim Waters, vice president of policy and communication, reported on it in his statewide column last month. Waters quotes Peter Suderman of Reason Magazine: "Insurers are expected to both abide by new rules, which could prove costly, and not significantly change their prices or services in response to them."

So now what happens when companies wake up to see that the new health care reform will wreak havoc on their business? Kentucky's Insurance Commissioner forces her will to get her way.

New Bluegrass Institute reports on KERA at 20 have implications for pending state assessments

The Bluegrass Institute’s new reports on Kentucky’s 20-year experience with Progressive Education ideas create concerns that two national efforts to create the Common Core State Assessments may already be running into heavy water.

These two separate efforts are trying to create assessments of student performance for all the states to evaluate performance against the new Common Core State Standards.

Those Common Core State Standards were developed by a partnership of the National Governors’ Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Kentucky rushed to adopt those standards before they were even finalized in a failed effort to win some Race to the Top money.

Unfortunately, both of the new test creation efforts seem to be headed down the same dead end streets that Kentucky’s now failed KIRIS and CATS assessments traveled.

Read more »

Berman out as Jefferson County superintendent!

Around 9 p.m. on November 22, 2010, the Courier-Journal announced that the school board in Kentucky’s largest school district, the Jefferson County Public School District, voted not to renew its contract with school superintendent Sheldon Berman.

Berman’s leadership was seriously questioned this fall when his very unpopular school busing plan to achieve integration created chaos in the lives of five year old students throughout the district.

The recent announcement that a significant proportion of the schools in the second listing of Kentucky’s Persistently Low-Achieving Schools came from Jefferson County highlighted more questions about Berman’s leadership.

Coverage of today's Louisville news conference

Take a look at Wave 3-TV's coverage of today's news conference in Louisville where Jim Waters, vice president of policy and communications, discussed a report series covering twenty years of KERA.

The story with a video clip can be found here.


84WHAS Radio also has coverage of today's news conference in Louisville.

That coverage can be found here and here.

Is 20-year-old KERA cause for celebration or concern?

A new report series issued today by the Bluegrass Institute, Kentucky’s free market think tank, discusses how an education fairytale in 1990 became a policy quagmire, leaving thousands of Kentuckians without core academic skills needed to compete in the 21st century global workplace.

Click here to read the short commentary and here to read the full report.

BIPPS promotes education reform, school choice on TV's 'Kentucky Tonight' at 8 p.m.

Jim Waters, Bluegrass Institute vice president of policy and communications, will appear tonight on KET's "Kentucky Tonight" at 8 p.m. (EST) to advocate for reforming the commonwealth's failing education system, including allowing charter schools.

The program is hosted by Bill Goodman live on KET1 and will be replayed Wednesday at 2 a.m.(EST).

During the live Monday broadcast, viewers with questions and comments may participate by e-mail at kytonight@ket.org.

Waters will be joined in his call for more responsible education policies by Rep. Brad Montell, R-Shelbyville, who will help lead the effort for charter schools in the 2011 session of the Kentucky General Assembly.

Other panelists include Rep. Carl Rollins, D-Midway, chairman of the House Education Committee, and Brent McKim, president of the Jefferson County Teachers Association (the district's teachers union).

New NAEP data out

White-Black math gaps getting worse

And even national educators don’t depict the situation properly!

The National Assessment of Educational Progress just released new data in the web on the testing of the nation’s students in reading and mathematics in 2009. Among other things, the release has this very clear statement from the National Assessment Governing Board about the real desired level of student performance.


That is a very good statement. It agrees very well with data that shows grade 8 NAEP reading and math proficiency rates compare remarkably well to the percentages of students who are on track for college and careers according to EXPLORE test results from Kentucky.

However, the information in the web also includes more, such as this disturbing graph, cut and pasted from one of the web pages with the title added (highlighted in green - title was off screen when the screen shot was taken). Tech Note: Screen shot taken Nobember 20, 2010, of “National Results, 5 of 9, Tab “National Results Grades 4 & 8,” from here.


Note that this says in 2009 only 42 percent of the whites were "Proficient" and only 15 percent of blacks were, for a gap of 27 points. Back in 1990, the gap was only 13 points.

The graph also has the understatement of the century, claiming that the gaps, “have not been reduced.” I guess not. They have GROWN dramatically!

But, there is an even BIGGER problem with this graph. It IGNORES all the additional students who scored better than “Proficient,” at the level NAEP calls “Advanced.” That’s the wrong way to present the data on gaps.

Let’s make that crystal clear.

Here is a graph I assembled today using data downloaded from the NAEP Data Explorer. This graph includes ALL students who scored at or above NAEP Proficient on NAEP grade 4 math.


Now we see the real black-white grade 4 math performance gap is 50 minus 15, or 35 points, 8 points higher (about 30 percent worse) than the 27 point difference web page graph owns up to!

The difference is that virtually no blacks score “Advanced,” while about 8 percent of the whites do.

Using the ‘right stuff,’ the gap back in 1990 was only one point higher than the misleading impression created by the NAEP’s graph in the web.

Anyway, the basic message stays the same. The gaps are not only very bad – they are getting worse.

So, here are some questions:

Why do educators in Kentucky continue to try to fool us by citing numbers for NAEP “Basic” as though this is a suitable performance target when our own testing data from EXPLORE and even the people who run the NAEP testing program say NO, It ISN’T!

And, why did national educators get their gap depiction wrong, too? Was it just a statistical error, or something more?

Common educators – Let’s stop the spin – NOW!

The gaps are VERY serious, and they are getting WORSE!

And, our kids deserve to have the situation portrayed accurately.

Quote of the day

“I believe we are making tremendous progress in many areas." --Supt. Sheldon Berman, Jefferson County Public Schools, site of 12 of Kentucky's 20 Persistently Low-Achieving Schools.

Thinking outside the ballot 'box' gets us nowhere

America's founders knew that individual citizens would play a vital role in renewing liberty. However, turnout at the polls in recent years suggests a majority of Kentuckians -- unlike voters in other countries -- don't understand how much their vote really matters.

Click here to read the latest Bluegrass Beacon.

Study finds fiscal conservatism spurs economic growth

A new study by Americans for Tax Reform shows states gaining congressional seats in the decennial reapportionment process have "significantly lower taxes, less government spending, and were more likely to have 'Right to Work' laws in place" compared to those states losing seats.

The study found the average top personal income tax rate among gainers is 116 percent lower than among losers. It also revealed the total state and local tax burden, as well as government spending, was about one-third lower.

In addition, seven of the eight gainers give workers the choice as to whether or not they join a union.

"Because reapportionment is based on population migration, this is further proof that fiscally conservative public policy spurs economic growth, creates jobs, and attracts population growth," the ATR report said.

It's tough to argue with the facts.

Jefferson County educators don’t get it: They operate a lot of very weak schools

I wrote a couple of days ago that educators in Jefferson County are whining and sniveling about finally having to face some accountability for their many very poor performing schools.

Sadly, instead of buckling down to figure out how to improve their under-performers, teachers along with Jefferson County superintendent Sheldon Berman are instead trying to torpedo House Bill 176. That's the law which is finally bringing some serious accountability and hope for improvement to the state’s very worst schools, the majority of which are found in Louisville.

To hear Berman and his cohorts tell it, it’s the bill that is all wrong.

No sir!

Here are a few examples of the performances in Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) low-achieving schools that demand strong action:


• No Child Left Behind Reports show math proficiency rates for all students range from a low of 4.7 percent at ‘The Academy at Shawnee’ to 28.53 percent at Seneca High School. These are the top and bottom performers in Jefferson County's low-achieving listing.

• Things are bad for African-American students in Seneca High; reading proficiency is only 36.76 percent and math proficiency is a dismal 13.43 percent. But, for these children of color in Shawnee, reading proficiency is only 16.18 percent, and math proficiency is virtually non-existent at only 2.08 percent!

• Twelve of the 20 Persistently Low-Achieving Schools in Kentucky are in JCPS – That’s 60 percent of all such schools in the state. For a point of reference, the district enrolls only about 16 percent of the state’s public school students.

• Among the district’s Persistently Low-Achieving High Schools, three – Iroquois, Valley and Shawnee – have gruesomely low graduation rates below 60 percent even according to the Kentucky Department of Education’s (KDE) seriously inflated statistics.

That easily qualifies these schools as “Dropout Factories” according to a definition developed by a Johns Hopkins University team that researches graduation rate reporting.

• If the KDE reported graduation rates by race for schools, blacks in these schools would do even worse, as we discussed in our report, “How Whites and Blacks Perform in Jefferson County Public Schools” two years ago.

Anyway, teachers and their superintendent in Jefferson County don’t seem to understand what they are doing. Their fussing about such things as required staffing changes included in HB-176 is seriously uninformed (more on that later). Most importantly, their ‘shoot the messenger’ grousing about finally being held accountable for poor performance in their schools just further erodes confidence that Jefferson County educators are really interested in turning these schools around.

The whining sends a message, and it’s a bad one: Jefferson County educators are far more interested in protecting adult turf than in digging in to create positive changes for the grossly under-served students in the district’s clearly low-achieving schools.

That’s a real shame!

District to get national and international accreditation is one of Kentucky’s 13 low performers????

Here’s a great education puzzle.

The Campbell County Public Schools are about to get accreditation from both AdvancED and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

That will make the district both nationally and internationally recognized.

However, just a week ago it was announced that Campbell County is one of the 13 long-time low-performing school districts under NCLB that will get extra help from the Kentucky Department of Education!!!

So, what is going on?

Campbell County failed NCLB since the law was enacted for performance of students with learning disabilities. It failed even when required proficiency rates were low. It still failed to make the requirement even though the “Safe Harbor” loophole in NCLB allows a district to be scored as making Adequate Yearly Progress with these challenging students merely by reducing the percentage of those students not considered to be proficient by just 10 percent each year.

For example, in 2009, 40.93 percent of the district’s learning disabled students were proficient in math, so 100 minus that figure, or 59.07 percent were not proficient. If the district had raised the proficiency rate by 5.907 points, it would have made AYP in math for learning disabled students in 2010.

Is it possible to achieve a 46.84 percent proficiency rate in math with these challenging students?

Well, the nearby Boone County School District, also in Northern Kentucky, achieved a 55.03 percent math proficiency rate with its learning disabled students in 2010.

I guess learning disabled kids don’t count with national and international accrediting organizations.

Louisville's Water Works likes unsweet tea

On Dec. 16, 1773, colonists boarded ships in Boston Harbor, throwing chests of tea overboard in protest of taxation without representation.

How quickly we forget.

Last week, Louisville's Board of Water Works slipped a 3.75 percent tax increase into its 2011 budget-- and in doing so bypassed the elected representatives of the people.

So Louisville, do you like your tea sweet or unsweet?

Louisville's Water Works is run by a private corporation, giving it the power to raise its rates without consulting the Louisville Metro Council or any other elected body. But the corporation's stock is solely owned by the Metro government, meaning the city reaps the benefits of all profits made. It's taxation without representation at it's finest, uh ... worst.

For the average customer, the increase will only amount in about $10 extra per year, so it will likely go unnoticed by most.

But there are some taking notice. While you may not see any tea thrown into the Ohio River in the near future, you can bet that this will not be the last word on the Louisville board's actions.

Is there an end in sight to pork?

One of the most hotly debated issues coming to the table this lame duck session is the Republicans' scheduled vote to ban proposing earmarks in spending bills, led by South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint.

Both Kentucky's senior Sen. Mitch McConnell and Sen.-Elect Rand Paul have been on the hot seat about this issue since the Nov. 2 election.

On the Senate floor yesterday, McConnell began his opening remarks by stating that he would vote for the earmark ban, coming as news to many after his comments last week about the importance of earmarks.

This is an important victory for the TEA Party movement, particularly in Kentucky.

The message of fiscally conservative activists has not fallen on deaf ears. Politicians on the right and left are recognizing the momentum and strength of the TEA Party. Even after the election is over, the movement has continued to press on with its message of lower taxes, less government spending and limited government.

As the lame duck session begins and Congress looks to the 2011 session, time will tell if the vows to ban earmarks are kept. But for now, the promises of doing so, are a step in the right direction.

Retired Ed school prof misses it on charter schools

Retired UK professor Marty Solomon's claim that “Most charter schools no better, worse than public ones” comes up short.

Claiming it is a “most-trusted” report, Solomon repeats an oft-heard partial citation of findings in the Stanford University (CREDO) “Multiple Choice” report on charters. What Solomon conveniently doesn’t tell us about that report is disappointing and indicative of shaky scholarship.

Maybe Solomon never read the CREDO report. He certainly overlooks the section titled "Charter School Effect Over Time," which begins on page 32. There it says charter schools do start to outshine regular public schools once students have been in charters at least three years.

That makes sense. There are no magic wands in education to suddenly reverse years of educational neglect and suddenly convert students into Albert Einsteins. It takes charters several years to bring entering students, who often arrive two or more grade levels behind, up to grade-level performance.

That’s just common sense. Why would anyone, especially an education professor, expect different? And, how did Solomon miss this finding in the study?

Since he seems enamored of the CREDO study’s methods, it’s surprising Solomon apparently never read two other CREDO studies on New York City and Louisiana charter schools.

Click the “Read more” link to learn about those.

Read more »

Big-government shades blind the big picture

Does the federal government have the power to require all Americans to purchase health care?

A recent article in The Kentucky Gazette, by Michael Maharrey of the Kentucky Tenth Amendment Center, says "no."

The article says that health care is a states' rights issue, noting that the 10th Amendment says "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

No power granted in the Constitution, no right to regulate.

But some Washington politicians with their big-government shades get hung up on Constitutional provisions that have nothing to do with health care, like the commerce clause and taxing authority.

Maharrey points out that the commerce clause emerged as a means of preventing states from imposing tariffs on each other. The word "commerce," as the framers intended, only refers to trade.

The other flawed argument lies in Congress's taxing authority found in Article I of the Constitution that permits it to collect taxes for the "general welfare" of the people. But one need look no further than the words of James Madison to clear up any confusion:

"With respect to the two words 'general welfare,' I have always regarded them as qualified by the details of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character...not contemplated by its creators."

Maharrey's argument is right in line with the Constitution. The same cannot be said about the federal government's health care mandate.

World's businessmen say: Quality of US education only ranks 22nd among world’s nations

I’ve been looking at some more data from ‘The Global Competitiveness Report 2009-2010” from the World Economic Forum.

The US rankings page, shows our country only ranked 22nd when business executives from around the world were asked, “How well does the educational system in your country meet the needs of a competitive economy?”

Some of the countries and economies that outrank us include expected nations like Singapore (ranked #1), Finland and Taiwan, China.

But, the ‘Higher Education and Training’ data tables (accessible from a link here) in the report also show Iceland, Ireland, Cyprus, Qatar, Barbados, Tunisia, The United Arab Emirates and even Malta outranked us, as well.

The Competitiveness Report lists the quality of education in the US as a “competitiveness disadvantage.” That is really disturbing.

We need to keep this in mind when we see Kentucky’s education system simplistically compared to performance elsewhere around the US. That is only shooting at a low target in the international sphere of things, at least according to the opinions of leading business executives from around the world.

How’s that – US math and science education now ranks just 48th in world!!!!

(Updated)

I just KNOW some member of the ‘KERA Amen Chorus’ is going to jump on this one, but don’t jump here.

I first learned of this unsettling statistic from Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday’s blog.

Per Holliday, the 48th place ranking comes from the World Economic Forum.

I checked out the actual World Economic Forum rankings. This statistic (5th Pillar Item 5.04) supposedly relates to higher education instruction. It is based on a survey of business executives from around the world.

However, when I dug deeper into the The Global Competitiveness Report's Data Tables section, it looks like the 'Higher Education' category pertains to secondary education, as well. In fact, the actual question asked was "How would you assess the quality of math and science education in your schools."

Bottom Line: Ranking only 48th out of 133 of the world’s countries (actually economies, a few small nations are combined in the report) in an education area that will drive future economies in the new Century certainly isn’t encouraging.

Talk of 'symbolic' votes casts real doubt on economic recovery

More than a symbolic gesture is called for in the fight against the federal health-care law, which is threatening the very existence of Kentucky's small businesses.

Click here to read the latest Bluegrass Beacon.

Northern Kentucky TEA Party makes national headlines by taking on the EPA

The Kentucky TEA Party is not going away. In fact, it's only just beginning to create a stir.

Today, the Northern Kentucky TEA Party made national news. The Huffington Post covered the group's opposition to the 25 percent water rate increase in the Northern Kentucky water district.

When the Northern Kentucky TEA partiers took their complaint to a hearing last month, the judge put the blame on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

This is yet another instance of the federal government's assault on Kentuckians.

The Bluegrass Institute is committed to reporting these intrusions, as indicated by recent blogs about the water rate hikes -- which amount to blatant unfunded federal mandates -- here and here and in Jim Waters' statewide column.

Jefferson County educators fighting for no changes!

Talk about denial!

The latest activity by some Jefferson County teachers makes it abundantly clear – some of the school district’s educators definitely are part of the problem.

Louisville’s teachers want to repeal or seriously strip back House Bill 176, a law that finally put a small amount of accountability into the schools in Kentucky. Instead, the transparent desire of Louisville’s educators is to return to the same old, status quo system where accountability is a joke and absolutely nothing of major importance happens to adults in the schools that don’t ‘carry the mail’ for their students.

Jefferson County educators whine that what is needed is more teacher training and local control. Superintendent Sheldon Berman, who attended the teachers’ rally, fusses that the key to turning around his schools is to invest in the existing teachers.

Well, the Kentucky Department of Education’s Receipts and Expenditures Excel spreadsheet for 2009-10 shows the Jefferson County Public School District already has one of the highest per pupil revenue rates in the state, ranking eighth at $12,625 per pupil. That’s thousands of dollars higher than the state average rate of $10,335.

If more training was the answer, why didn’t Jefferson County already take advantage of its extensive dollars and local control to make that happen before HB 176 came along?

But, instead of spending all that extra money on his teaching staff, Berman is squandering it on a busing plan from hell that forces five-year olds into one-way rides to school of well over an hour.

The teachers also whine that the kids need stability. Well, not the Louisville schools’ kind.

The stability argument is a red herring. We are seeing examples all the time in other states were kids successfully transfer to charter schools and even private schools. That is obviously a huge change for the children, yet many kids actually thrive because of it.

And, if stability really is an issue, how does Berman reconcile his comments at this teacher rabble-rouser event with his busing fiasco? Talk about disrupting a child’s stability!!! And, the family and neighborhood stability, as well.

What kids need is a school with an adult staff that really cares about them, cares about academics (not some vague, other ‘values’ that don’t matter if kids don’t get academics) and which puts the students first instead of what works best for adults in the system.

Bottom line: Unwittingly, the latest Jefferson County teacher protest action shows that too many Jefferson County educators want to put adult convenience first, ahead of what works best for kids. That adds to the overwhelming evidence from all sorts of testing that if Jefferson County is allowed to keep a status quo in its schools, students will continue to suffer.

American kids ‘get’ it, but say they’re not getting 'it'

I’m talking about a new survey on whether kids in this country appreciate the importance of mathematics and science education.

They definitely “get” the importance. According to the survey,

• “99 percent of teens believe it is important to be good at math and science.”

• “58 percent aspire to pursue a math- or science-related career.”

But, our teens don’t think they are getting enough math and science to compete against the rest of the world. The survey also found:

• “American teens are not confident in the United States’ ability to compete in math and science.” “When asked which country is best at math and science today, 90 percent selected a choice other than the United States, with 67 percent choosing Japan or China.”

American teens have some definite ideas why other countries are ahead of the United States in math and science.

• “51 percent of teens who are not confident in the United States’ math and science abilities believe this is because Americans do not work hard enough.”

• “44 percent of those who do not think the United States is the best at math and science blame a lack of discipline.”

Of special note:

• “Just a third of teens blame lack of funding or school emphasis for poor math and science abilities in the United States.”

So, how are our schools going to ‘get’ kids to ‘get’ the self-discipline to work harder? Apparently, the self-esteem “stuff” and the other things we’ve been hearing about for the past 20 years or so since radical education reform started across the country have not worked. Spending a lot more money hasn’t worked, either, though some educators definitely don’t ‘get’ that lesson.

Sen.-elect Rand Paul joins Jim Waters on the airwaves today

Jim Waters, vice president of policy and communications for the Bluegrass Institute, will be guest-hosting on "The Joe Elliott Show" on Salem Radio's WGTK-AM 970 today (Thursday), Nov. 11, from Noon to 3 p.m. (eastern)

Sen.-elect Dr. Rand Paul and state Sen. Damon Thayer are scheduled to join Jim on the program.

Listen live here and call in at (502) 571-0970.

So, is NCLB really impossible?

We’ve gotten a belly full of excuses and complaints from educators over the past few days about how No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is terrible and schools and school districts that have finally had to face some accountability are being treated unfairly. These whiny educators claim NCLB sets impossible goals.

Well, maybe not. Maybe, not even if you get identified as a low-achieving school.

The Kentucky Department of Education’s News Release 10-065 has some interesting information that undermines the whining from the ‘Educators in Denial Club.’ You see, two schools on the first Persistently Low-Achieving Schools listing last year have pulled up their performance and actually made Adequate Yearly Progress in 2010.

Here is a table from the news release that shows this interesting information. Check out the entries in the far right column for the Leslie County and Metcalfe County High Schools.


Both Leslie County High and the Metcalfe County High made double-digit improvements in proficiency rates between 2009 and 2010, enough to allow them to meet the 2010 NCLB targets.

Read more »

United we pay, divided we save

Sen.-elect Rand Paul has indicated that gridlock isn't necessarily a bad thing, pointing out that debate is healthy and a divided government is less likely to spend money.

As it turns out, Paul is on to something.

A recent study by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University shows that on average, divided government increases spending by 2.55 percent, while government with one party in control increases spending by 4.67 percent.

That is big news for taxpayers, especially since the Kentucky Legislature and U.S. Congress will both be divided for the next term.

"Divided we stand, united we fall," Thomas Jefferson once said.

Those who loathe the prospect of a divided government and gridlock should remember that our founding fathers supported the idea of divided government as part of the American checks and balances system.

Maybe some good will come from the new listing of failing Kentucky school districts

We are learning that current attempts to fix schools don’t work


“I came on the local (school) board in 1987. What you just said to me is no different than what I heard in 1987. So why should I be hopeful?”

Kentucky Board of Education Chair Joe Brothers
October 8, 2009 Kentucky Board of Education Meeting in Frankfort, Kentucky


As I read comments in the Winchester Sun about the Clark County District being named one of the state’s lowest performing school districts, I could not help recalling Mr. Brothers’ insightful – and all too accurate – quote.

Consider this:

• The Clark County District has been in trouble under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) ever since the bill took effect in 2002.

• Five years ago, the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) sent an audit team to the district to figure out what was wrong.

• For the past four years, the KDE provided assistance teams to the district.


But, it has not helped, according to the district’s Assistant Superintendent, Pat Rosenthal.

Worse, despite all that supposed assistance, the district’s relatively new superintendent, Elaine Farris, says:

• The district isn't monitoring student progress in a systematic way.

• The district isn’t holding everybody accountable for making sure all students succeed.


And, finally, after years and years of KERA, Farris says:

“It’s just a fact that there’s the perception that some kids can’t learn, and we’ve got to change that thinking. Until we believe in our hearts that all kids can learn, we can’t change it.”

So, here are my questions right back.

• Why do we still have people in the school system with biased attitudes like that and who – after half a decade of effort – clearly are not going to change those attitudes?

• And, how can we talk about accountability in Kentucky’s schools when things like teacher tenure mean Farris can’t get rid of those people who, by her own admission, simply don’t get it and clearly are part of the problem?


Sadly, Joe Brothers, your comment still rings true today, more than a year after you uttered it and summarily got replaced on the Kentucky Board of Education for your candor. You see, that is what we do to people in Kentucky who really try to make effective changes in our schools.

Let the educator whining begin

Fayette County superintendent fussing about finally being held accountable

It didn’t take long.

The new report on Kentucky’s low-performing school districts has only been out a few hours, but the superintendent of Fayette County is already crying alligator tears about being called to task for low student test scores.

It's sad when the superintendent of Kentucky's second largest school district doesn't get it. The name of the act is *NO* Child Left Behind. And, kids ARE being left behind in Fayette County.

The 2010 NCLB report for Fayette County shows the district failed African-Americans and learning disabled students in both reading and math, and the district failed poor kids in the federal school lunch program for reading.


Hispanics and students with limited English proficiency also would have failed for reading, as well, except for one of those infamous NCLB loopholes.

The facts are that Fayette County's overall average proficiency rate only looks good because whites left the rest far behind. Don't blacks and other special groups of kids count in Fayette County schools?

Furthermore, don't forget that those proficiency rates used for NCLB in Kentucky still are based on inflated scores from left-over tests from our now defunct CATS program.

If this state ever gets accountability tests tied to real standards, like those used in the ACT or the National Assessment of Educational Progress, those fantasy proficiency rates are going to crumble.

Bottom line: Fayette County failed against very low standards. Instead of owning up to it and starting to fix things, the district’s head educator is wasting time fussing.

School and district performance shockers!

Ten more Kentucky schools named Persistently Low-Achieving

Thirteen districts tagged for low performance and targeted for intervention, as well

You know it’s a real shock because two key education bloggers who normally sing praises for Kentucky’s school system are both are carrying related stories here, here, here, and here about newly announced low-performing school systems.

As usual, a large proportion of the new Persistently Low-Achieving Schools are in Jefferson County.

But, the real shock to me was finding the Campbell County Public School District in the listing of the school districts that are targeted for assistance. This is in an up-scale area of the state, and the listing of this district shows that nay-sayers who think bad schools are only found elsewhere are seriously wrong.

Here are the districts and some of their vital statistics:



Districts shaded in pink perform the lowest in the group and will get:

• District-level leadership assessments and targeted assistance from the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE), and

• Will work in partnership with Educational Recovery Directors and other KDE staff to develop and implement corrective action plans.”

In addition, these five districts must take other actions required by all 13 listed school systems. They are:

• Develop a corrective action plan approved by KDE,

• Defer programmatic funds and develop a budget for deferred funds that will be used to implement activities in the corrective action plan, to be approved by KDE, and

• Set aside 10 percent of the district’s Title I Part A allocation for high-quality professional development to help teachers close achievement gaps.

This is all very nice, but will it work? Do our educators know how to turn these school districts around given all the red tape and restrictions of state regulations and union contracts?

More importantly, if the schools in the district don’t lose their School Based Decision Making Council (SBDM) authority, tinkering with the districts is largely a waste of time. The SBDM, not the districts, currently have the important say about what goes on in the classroom. Trying to fix school districts without taking over SBDM control is like building dams high up in the Rocky Mountains to try and control flooding on the Lower Mississippi River.

More about the schools later.

Kentucky education getting left farther behind on really innovative schools

The Center for Education Reform just released the news that nationwide the number of charter public schools grew by nine percent in 2010.

Thirty-nine states and the District of Columbia has them, and they now have more of these public schools which, in places like Boston, New Orleans and New York City, are beginning to show dramatic performance with disadvantaged children.

Meanwhile, Kentucky has not one of these innovative schools. Instead, our disadvantaged kids continue to suffer in schools stifled by regulations and union contracts that interfere with doing the innovative things our kids need to succeed.

Prof: Government didn't invent the railroad

How does your high school do in getting students ready for college?

I’ve been writing over the past day about the new High School Feedback Reports from the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE). For parents and others who want information about how their high school is doing in preparing kids for college, this information is a gold mine.

One of the more interesting areas of the CPE Feedback Report web pages is the one where you can download reports for individual schools.

Each school has a separate, 5-page report loaded with information on 2008 high school graduates such as:

• How many kids the school graduated,
• How many went to college and college-going rates,
• ACT scores for kids who got accepted to college, and
• The percent of students from the school who arrived at college unprepared in various key subjects.

There are some cautionary tales in the data.

For example, here is the “Percent not Ready for College by Subject” graph for the Shawnee High School in Louisville (click on the graph to enlarge).


Shawnee has been officially designated as one of Kentucky’s ‘Persistently Low-Achieving Schools,’ making it among the 10 worst in the state. Shawnee only sent 33.7 percent of its graduates on to college, with the lion’s share, 29.2 percent, going to in-state schools. Those in-state college bound students had astronomically bad preparation for college.

For example, the far left brown bar shows 63.6 percent of Shawnee’s in-state college freshmen were unprepared for a credit-bearing college English course, and a notably higher 72.7 percent were not ready for a credit-bearing course in mathematics.

After 20 years of KERA, that is simply gross.

If you want to see how some better schools perform, click the “Read more” link.

Read more »

Herald-Leader picks up my concerns about new CPE report

Jim Warren at the Lexington Herald-Leader understands my discussion that the slightly good news in the new High School Feedback Report from the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education also creates some major concerns about both the amount and rate of progress.

New college remediation data shows nagging number of unprepared students little changed

The good news in the Council on Postsecondary Education’s (CPE) new high school feedback report release package is that more Kentucky high school graduates are going directly on to college, and a somewhat better percentage of those new high school graduates didn’t need remedial course work.

Some of the not good news is that the number of students entering the system with remedial needs hardly improved at all from 2006.


It would be interesting to find out if this chronic 8,600 or so student group comes from only certain Kentucky high schools or are spread out evenly throughout the state. Answering that question might help focus attention on schools that might really need it.

It would also be interesting to find out how well students who do need remediation do. Are they getting through to a degree in larger numbers or falling by the wayside despite the extra help?

Technical Note: I assembled this from statistical data in the statewide high school feedback summary on line here.

Simon says: Our rights are 'slip slidin' away'

C.S. Lewis once said, “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive.” This warning should be heeded in Kentucky communities where unelected health nannies are running roughshod over private property rights of business owners.

Click here to read the latest Bluegrass Beacon.

Slight improvement in college readiness rates not enough, not fast enough

New data shows that at Kentucky’s current rate of extremely slow improvement, it will require more than half a century to eliminate the need for remedial math courses for entering college freshmen.

The Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE) just issued a new data concerning the actual percentages of 2008 Kentucky high school graduates who immediately required remedial courses upon entering the state’s postsecondary system in the Fall of 2008.

This graph (click on it to enlarge) shows the statewide breakdown of the percentage of recent Kentucky high school graduates who needed to take remedial courses immediately upon college entry. The data is for entering college classes from 2002 to 2008.


Regarding this new data, CPE President Bob King says, “This report shows that we are making progress in the proportion of high school graduates choosing to attend college, and in the levels of readiness of students who enroll in college directly from high school.” However, King also says, “We need to produce even greater improvement, faster.”

Click the “Read more” link to learn more.

Read more »

Legislative intel provides firepower needed to combat committees' special interests

Why are committee chairmen in the Kentucky Legislature so important? Because they hold all the power.

If you look at this flow chart on how a bill becomes a law, you will notice that chairmen have special privileges, including the ability to "stall" a bill before it even gets to the chamber floor.

So what happens if a bill comes before a committee that conflicts with the chairman's special interests?

“Committee chairs have enormous power in the commonwealth’s legislature,” said Jim Waters, Bluegrass Institute's vice president of policy and communications. “They have the power to give great momentum to bills they – and their special-interest allies – want passed, and hold up those they don’t.”

How do Kentuckians fight against these special interests? By becoming more active in the legislative process and contacting their legislators.

The Bluegrass Institute has made this especially easy by providing profiles containing comprehensive information for all 138 state legislators. These profiles have been added to FreedomKentucky.org under the "Kentucky Legislators" page.

Each profile includes a biography, contact information – including phone numbers and e-mail addresses – and identifies which committees the lawmaker serves on.

In addition to the profiles, the institute has also added pages on House and Senate Committees, as well as Legislature Leadership-- So you'll know just who to contact when that bill you support or oppose comes up.

To read the full press release, click here. To go to the "Kentucky Legislators" page, click here.

Turnout high, but not high enough

I'll have more to say about this in an upcoming column, but for now: Voter turnout in this year's midterm election was high, but not high enough.

The fact that 48.9 percent went to the polls shows that a majority of eligible Kentucky voters once again did not cast a ballot.

Do those of you who didn't vote remember how free and proud those Iraqis appeared that held up their ink-stained fingers after the despot was brought down?

Some of those Iraqis went to the polls under threat of death. What's your excuse?

(Photo: www.freerepublic.com.)

Backing parental participation in schools

Kentucky’s First Lady Jane Beshear and the Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday are kicking off a project to get parents more involved in schools.

That is a great idea, and follows up on my recent comments in several blogs here and here about parents, for unknown reasons, not showing up for important school events.

But, I think there is another side to the story – the parents’ side. If you have some insight into why, given that education is now critical to a child’s future, more parents are not getting involved, make a comment to this blog. I’d like to hear your story, and I think others would benefit, as well.

Let the First Lady and the Commissioner hear your side of the story, too.

Teacher candidate evaluations getting kicked up a notch - elsewhere

How would you feel about getting on board a passenger airplane where the pilot had done nothing more than passing a written test and completing some academic courses on flying without ever getting behind the controls with an instructor in a real airplane, let alone ever passing a practical check ride?

The Associated Press reports that many states do something similar to that with children, putting teachers in front of students without much evaluation of their actual abilities in the classroom. Pass the courses, pass the license exam and have at it with kids!

That may be changing, finally, at least elsewhere, with a new Teacher Performance Assessment program that evaluates student teachers using independent expert panels instead of the student’s education school profs, who have a biased interest in getting students licensed.

Sadly, I don’t see Kentucky listed as a piloting state for this effort.

So far, the people I’ve been able to reach at the Education Professional Standards Board have not been familiar with the program, either.

Contacting legislators: Doing the research so citizens don't have to

An online resource created by the Bluegrass Institute, Kentucky’s free-market think tank, provides citizens with valuable information that makes it easier to connect with their political representatives in Frankfort.

Click here to read the news release and here to visit the new "Kentucky Legislators" page at FreedomKentucky.org.

Issues raised at Brookings conference on the new Common Core State Assessments

New assessments Kentucky is betting on are far from a done deal



“If you think focus is a good thing, the Common Core is probably not taking us there.”

Quoted from: Andrew Porter
George and Diane Weiss Professor of Education, University of Pennsylvania
Also a former member of Kentucky’s National Technical Advisory Panel on Assessment and Accountability



The Brookings Institution hosted a conference on October 28, 2010 about the Common Core State Standards and the two national efforts to create uniform tests to assess student performance in all states against those new standards.

As you may recall, Kentucky rushed to adopt the Common Core State Standards early in 2010 – before they were even finalized – in a failed attempt to win Race to the Top money.

I’m still going through the various PowerPoints, speeches and papers from the conference, but it is clear that the proposals for the new Common Core State Assessments are far from complete, required technology does not currently exist and there could be some significant problems ahead.

Andy Porter’s comment above, for example, could imply the Common Core State Assessments are at odds with the intent behind Kentucky’s Senate Bill 1 from 2009. That bill requires a deeper and more focused curriculum to get away from the ineffective “mile wide, inch deep” curricular coverage we have had since KERA was enacted.

Have Kentucky’s educators signed on to a program that won’t comply with SB-1? Stay tuned.

Read more »

Join Jim Waters, WLAP on Election Night

Jim Waters, vice president of policy and communications for the Bluegrass Institute, will join host Leland Conway tomorrow for Election Night coverage on Lexington's NewsRadio 630 WLAP-AM from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. (eastern)

Waters will join a team analyzing on the meaning of the election results for future critical public policy issues in Kentucky.

Click here to listen live.