Substantial progress or not: You can’t have education both ways

A Tuesday news release from the Kentucky School Boards Association has me scratching my head. Why do some education boosters in this state think we don’t remember the past?

The legislature realized that Kentucky’s CATS school assessment program was not providing trustworthy information and disbanded it back in 2009. I remember that.

Never the less, a consortium of groups including the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, the Council for Better Education (CBE) and the Kentucky Association of School Councils couldn’t let go. They kept on computing a ‘CATS Index’ anyway.

Today that consortium released data disaggregated by race and special student groups such as English language learners.

The bottom line from this new release: even relying on the watered down testing left over from CATS, most student groups in Kentucky are not on track to reach the performance goals that were set back in the start of this century.

In one case, students with limited English proficiency, the scores are flat or even declining at all school levels.

So, on Tuesday, the story was about enduring achievement gaps and that major work remains to bring Kentucky education to the level we all want to see.

That doesn’t mesh with recent claims we’ve been hearing about the state making “great strides” over the past 20 years, does it?

I'm sorry ed boosters, but you just can’t have this both ways.

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Governors Bush and Wise on digital learning

Former governors Jeb Bush (Florida) and Bob Wise (West Virginia) talk to Piers Morgan about digital learning in this CNN interview.

Morgan also gets a scoop on the announcement of “Digital Learning Day,” coming on February 1, 2012.



You don’t have to wait until February, thought, to get an idea about digital learning in Kentucky and what stands in the way of our kids getting more of this exciting new educational experience.


Just check out our new report: Digital Learning Now!: Obstacles to Implementation in Kentucky.

Jeb Bush talks to Piers Morgan about education

Piers doesn’t lay on the dreaded 'America’s Got Talent “X” Button' in this interview!

Clearly, Florida’s former governor has got “talent” when talking education.

Bluegrass Institute releases report on digital learning

The Bluegrass Institute released a report today focusing on roadblocks to increasing digital learning in Kentucky at a press conference at Conner High School in Boone County, Kentucky.

The new report is inspired by Digital Learning Now!, a report from former governors Jeb Bush’s (Florida) and Bob Wise’s (West Virginia) Foundation for Excellence in Education.

The foundation’s report deals with digital learning issues from a nationwide perspective while the new institute report focuses on specifics in Kentucky. The national report was released in December 2010.

In addition to a presentation of the report, the press conference agenda featured comments from Kentucky Associate Commissioner of Education Dewey Hensley concerning his efforts in the Kentucky Department of Education’s Office of District 180 to turn around Kentucky’s lowest performing school systems.

Several digital learning efforts were also discussed including the Barren Academy of Virtual and Expanded Learning and new digital learning efforts in the Conner High School.

The Bluegrass Institute’s “Digital Learning Now!, Obstacles to Implementation in Kentucky” is available on line now to everyone. It should prove important reading for educators, legislators, members of business and industry and the general public who are interested in education in Kentucky.

Stay tuned for more information on the press conference and the new report.

(Updated following actual news conference)

Southern charter school state handily beats Kentucky in new ACT test results

The new ACT results are out, and I already posted a blog earlier today with the news that Kentucky did edge up slightly in ranking among those states where ACT testing is essentially universal.

But, a really big story concerns how Kentucky stacked up against hurricane-racked schools in Louisiana. Louisiana rebuilt its post-Katrina school system largely by harnessing the power and flexibility of charter schools to move out much more quickly than traditional, regulation- and union-constrained public schools could ever accomplish.

Here is our comparison graph again of states where ACT testing is virtually or totally universal.


Note that Louisiana, one of the nation’s strongest charter school states, and also a Southern state, outscored Kentucky by 0.6 point for the 2011 high school graduates’ ACT Composite Score. Here is a further breakdown of ACT Composite Scores by race for the two states:


In particular, notice that blacks in Louisiana outscored Kentucky’s blacks by a full point on the ACT Composite Score. That is a notable difference.

However, the white situation is much more dramatic. Kentucky’s whites languished behind whites from Louisiana by a whopping 1.6 points! That is a very dramatic difference in state-to-state comparisons.

Keep in mind, both states tested all of their graduates, so these comparisons are quite appropriate.

When you consider the challenges Louisiana has faced, this is clearly rather remarkable performance – for them. Good job, Louisiana!

The situation shows that Kentucky could make stronger educational gains, faster, if it would finally establish a good charter school program.

Data sources: ACT Profile Reports for Kentucky and Louisiana, on line here.

Kentucky edges up in 2011 ACT test reports

Data released today shows Kentucky’s performance improved slightly in ACT college entrance test results for the high school graduating class of 2011. It’s an encouraging sign that Kentucky’s schools are finally changing focus to preparing students for college and careers instead of preparing for meaningless CATS assessments.

At a press conference today in Nicholasville, Kentucky and in their web sites, the ACT, Incorporated and the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) posted data listing the combined average performance of all students in the state, both public and private.

The reports show among those states that test all, or virtually all, students with the ACT college entrance test, that Kentucky improved its position by one place in the rankings, swapping places with Tennessee (See graph below; click on it to enlarge).


Still, in a fair comparison of states where testing percentages are virtually identical, it is clear that Kentucky has a long way to go to match top-performers like Illinois and Colorado, which pioneered the policy of testing all their students with the ACT a decade ago. In 2011, those states posted ACT Composite Scores for all their public and private school students of 20.9 and 20.7, respectively. Kentucky scored more than a point lower at 19.6, a very notable difference.

For example, in Kentucky, only 28 percent of the graduates met the ACT College Benchmark score that signaled adequate preparation for a college math course in algebra. In Illinois, 42 percent were prepared to take that same college algebra course.

It is important to note that ACT performance in Kentucky cannot be validly compared to performance in most other states because those states do not conduct universal testing with this assessment (UK Center on Business and Economic Research, are you listening?).

For example, ACT participation rates for high school graduates in 2011 ranged from a low of only nine percent in Maine to full, 100 percent participation in eight states in the graph above and nearly universal participation (98 percent in North Dakota for the first time in 2011, so also included in the graph for that reason).

In most states, students voluntarily take the test, so the ACT results do not represent a valid random sample and therefore cannot be reasonably compared to states where testing is universal.

There is a lot more to discuss from the results of this very important testing program, so stay tuned.

Meanwhile, you can find some of the 2011 reports from the ACT, Incorporated here.

Keep in mind, the reports released by ACT, Incorporated cover overall averages in each state for all students, public and private. We’ll talk about public school only performance in Kentucky in a later blog.

The power of choice, free-markets in education

The Wall Street Journal recently published a great discussion about free market solutions to pressing education problems. The video also dispels a lot of myths about school choice.



The power of choice is amazing.

Click here to see 10 reasons why Kentucky's children deserve school choice!

Smells like school spirit

Here is a NY Times/David Brooks Op-Ed that is well worth your time to read if you care at all about certain elements in the public school system who would mislead us about the need for real reform.

Cafe Hayek on government schools

Economist Donald Boudreaux discusses the importance of competition in education. A line that stuck out to me:

"...each government school has a captive pool of students, and that government schools get their revenues not from paying customers but from taxed property owners."

The Bluegrass Institute has long been an advocate of more competition in the education system.

Watching other states take steps toward reform

This week starts off on a sour note (cue trombone) with Kentuckians having to sit back and watch other states' leadership take steps towards education system change while we continue to talk in circles.

In Tennessee, lawmakers have empowered local school boards to guide the decisions of teachers rather than unions. This is an important step in improving an education system for the kids. In New Jersey, Governor Christie is implementing a policy that would allow private companies to manage chronically under-perfoming school districts. We have chroniclly under-performing districts in our own state!

While neither of these new initiatives are magic bullet solutions for school systems, they are a step in the right direction. When will leadership in Kentucky start to take similar steps? Ask your legislator when he/she plans to take a stand and put kids first in education.