Please help the Bluegrass Institute

Digging out of the hacker-induced funk we found ourselves thrust into a month ago has been a real chore. As you may have noticed, we have beefed up our offerings here on the blog. We have many exciting upgrades coming in the weeks ahead.

New readers are responding to our growth, but we need your help. If you like what you see here, please take a minute to tell a friend or two (or three hundred!).

If you haven't already, please sign up for email updates by entering an email address in the space provided at the top right portion of this page.

Anonymous comments are greatly encouraged on this site. Keep the emails coming, but if you want to leave something on the site to move the conversation along that would be great, too.

Thank you for your support as we move toward making Kentucky the strong, free state it was always meant to be. Let's do this!!!

(And keep your eye on KentuckyVotes.org. Our highest-trafficked site has already had a major impact on Frankfort and we are just getting warmed up.)

Family IS a fiscal issue

Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D. is the senior research fellow in economics at the Acton Institute. She's also a very astute observer of the importance of the family as related to the fiscal well-being of a civil society. Here's a clip from Morse's recent article, "Family Is a Fiscal Issue":


"The choice to have children inside or outside marriage is just another personal choice for each individual to make privately. But a recent report from the Institute for American Values shows that these seemingly private decisions can have serious, and expensive, costs to the taxpayer. They estimate that The Taxpayer Costs of Divorce and Unwed Childbearing amount to at least $112 billion each and every year, or more than $1 trillion each decade."


Read the complete article here. It's worth the read, even if you don't adhere to all the author's conclusions.

Tightening our belts like drunken sailors

The favored buzzphrase in Frankfort this year has been about "tightening our belts" with a tough budget situation.

An LRC source gave me the following information in exchange for a promise that his/her identity would not be divulged (seriously!). It's the official authorized bonding limit for the 2009-10 budget years.

You won't believe it.

We will add $1,508,494,000 to the state's credit card in our belt-tightening biennium. That's one and a half billion dollars, for the math-challenged. With interest payments, you can double that to $3 billion.

Thank your grandchildren.

And we already have the 3rd highest debt-to-GDP ratio of all states in the nation. Thank goodness for Massachusetts and New York!

The Decline of History in Our School Curriculum

James Rees, Executive Director of the historical site at George Washington’s home, Mount Vernon, recently wrote a short letter but important letter about a recent report on the decline of history instruction in public schools.

As we get ready to celebrate our nation’s independence, I am going to make Mr. Rees’ letter and the actual report (available by clicking the "Findings and Recommendations" link on the Web page) part of my celebratory efforts. I invite you to do the same.

Graduation Rates – Who ya gonna trust?

Here’s a great example of the terrible confusion and lack of the transparency in education statistics in Kentucky.

An educator run blog in Kentucky just posted an article praising the state’s recent rise in high school graduation rates.

The article was originally published in the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer. It claims our graduation rate is now the highest ever, and it has been rising much faster than the rest of the nation.

What makes this so interesting is that at almost at the same instant the Owensboro paper printed their article, the Herald-Leader printed "State dropout rate is analyzed" which says "Kentucky has one of the highest dropout rates in the nation. Most of the dropouts are white and US-born."

Graduation rates and dropout rates are closely related. You can’t have great performance on one without great performance on the other. So, clearly at least one of the newspapers is wrong, but I actually don't think either paper has it right.

Using one of the better performing calculations – one even the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence uses – I think we have hovered somewhere around the middle of the pack on graduation rates for some time. I am confident the bottom of the heap allegation in the Herald-Leader isn’t correct.

But, that doesn't let the Owensboro paper off the hook, either. The Messenger-Inquirer’s claim that our current 71.5 percent graduation rate is the highest ever for Kentucky conflicts with the facts. In the early 1990s our rate was still better at 72.7%. See page 14 in "Making it to Graduation," by Thomas G. Mortenson, created for the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence's 10-Year report on KERA (not on line, to my knowledge). The rate then went into a long period of decay. Only recently has it made some recovery. So, the “improvement” cited in the Messenger-Inquirer is really only a partial recovery of lost ground. We still have not returned to where we were back in the early 1990s.

So, like I said, who ya gonna trust? Even the newspapers are full of the confusion.

The real issue here is, why, almost two decades after KERA's enactment, do our educators still fail to provide credible answers to even relatively simple but important questions about the proportion of kids we graduate? Confusion reigns because Kentucky’s educators never developed an accurate system to track the real graduation rate. If our educators can’t get even this relatively simple stuff right (a problem other states have solved, by the way), how much confidence can we place in their ability to handle the far more difficult challenge of accurately measuring academic achievement?

Kentucky's too-shallow outhouse hole

The current election cycle is the first one in which I have seen a Kentucky politician suggest that his use of an outdoor privy is some kind of qualification for higher office. (It's right here.)

If you've ever had to use one, the idea of romanticizing the experience in order to appeal to the Everyman voter probably isn't the first thing to come to mind. In fact, it is probably going to be at least as far back as third after "wow, it stinks in here" and "I wish this outhouse hole was dug deeper."

Not only is Kentucky's public employee health insurance benefits outhouse hole not deep enough, last week's effort to go back in and require employees and retirees to add 1% of their salaries to the same pit does too little to effect the smell or the eventual outcome.

We are up to our knees in this mess because we didn't prepare well enough for rising healthcare costs to prevent overuse of the system. Saving us from a mess no Kentuckian can stomach now means ending the practice of using taxpayers' pockets as a bottomless outhouse hole. Making health benefits for public employees more like those available in the private sector is far more sensible. Making that our first fix in 2009 may ease up on the smell considerably.

Frankfort picks your tax increase poison for you

There is increasing buzz around Frankfort about the next effort to raise taxes on Kentuckians.

A cigarette tax is considered a path of somewhat limited resistance, but most forget how easy it is for House and Senate members alike to justify raising taxes on businesses.

That's what they tried to do with HB 302 in the 2008 session. And they succeeded in doing so with HB 258.

Expect them to come back for another bite of the apple in 2009. I'd say a second shot at HB 302 is a fairly likely suspect.

For the children, of course.

Name Calling Educators STILL Owe Kentuckians an Apology

Let’s understand this very clearly. Given their limited incomes, Kentucky taxpayers already spend about as much as they can afford for education. So, accusing taxpayers of being “last place” cheap simply isn’t fair. Even worse, the US Census Bureau says it isn’t true, either.

But, not long ago, a Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) news release basically accused all Kentuckians of being education cheapskates, saying, “According to the U.S. Census Bureau, based on 2003-04 data, Kentucky ranked dead last in per capita expenditures of state and local governments for public schools.”

Wow! – Not just “last” – DEAD last! – The Census Bureau says so – YOU CHEAPSKATE!

Well, it isn’t true – NONE of it.

First, the KDE doesn’t even rank the right statistics. The best school funding comparisons use “Per Pupil Funding.” That way, states like Kentucky with older populations are not put at an unfair disadvantage.

Second, the KDE’s “stuff” didn’t come from the Census Bureau. By itself, that is a very serious misrepresentation that demands an apology.

Third, the Census doesn’t rank us last. Want to see the real Census Bureau last place rankings? The figure below shows Bureau’s latest rankings for the highest and lowest state education spending. Kentucky isn’t in last place, not in next to last place, or not even in next to next to last place.



What’s more, the Census news release containing this figure came out a week and a half before the department published its slur on our generosity. Doesn’t anyone at the KDE check things out before taking such ridiculous swipes at the citizens of this state?

Well, I blogged about this in late April (that blog was lost when our old site was hacked), pointing out that the Kentucky Department of Education owes all Kentuckians a serious apology.

We are still waiting.

So, I am again listing links to two You Tube videos that explain exactly where the department got its nonsense rankings and why they are nonsense. These are going to keep showing up until we get that apology, because misquoting the US Census Bureau and putting out a lie in the process doesn’t square with our effort to improve transparency in government.





and

Bureaucrats storming the gates?

Now that Frankfort has tweaked public employee fringe benefits downward by prohibiting double-dipping and extending work requirements for full benefits, it will be interesting to see how many people are placed on the state payroll between now and September 1 when the new law takes effect.

Sen. Obama's role in Kentucky pension reform

When Sen. Tom Buford of Nicholasville was picked to chair Kentucky's Senate Banking and Insurance Committee by the body's Democratic majority, he became the first Republican to head one of the state's legislative panels in more than seventy years.

Buford, a successful central Kentucky banker knows his stuff. So when he says the pension reform bill and the week-long special session completed Friday represent a failure on the part of the General Assembly, it may be wise to cast a skeptical eye on those who were quick to declare victory earlier in the week.

"I don't think many of the legislators understand the pension plans," Buford said.

Some Democratic legislators have stated quietly their belief that a federal universal health insurance plan will save them the trouble of catching up with the rising costs of state and local employees' and retirees' healthcare costs. The funny thing is, none of them have bothered to ask Sen. Barack Obama about that.

What's even funnier is that Sen. Buford did ask.

Math IS a Deal

No sooner did I publish the previous blog on the issue of public school teachers not knowing what kids really need in math than the news of a new AP poll showed up saying that most Americans agree that schools place too much emphasis on the wrong subjects, and math is suffering.

I knew you all agreed with me!

Now, go reinforce your correct opinion by looking at the You Tube in the previous post.

Do High School Teachers Know What Kids Need to Succeed in College?

Despite recent announcements that three more people have been added to the CATS Task Force, this committee remains heavily composed of K to 12 education people. There still isn’t a single college classroom instructor on this committee. In fact, there is scant representation even from college level administrators whose inadequate numbers are equaled by the number of representatives from various chambers of commerce.

That can create real problems for the task force. With so many people on this committee so unaware of the problems our colleges and the business world see with recent high school graduates, the vast majority of the group will be on a steep learning curve just to gather enough information to even begin intelligent deliberations about what to do. Meanwhile, time available to put a worthwhile report together before the next legislative session is running out. One month is already wasted, as the first task force meeting now is delayed until August.

To learn more about this situation – including results of a survey that shows the disconnects in understanding between high school teachers and college instructors that the task force must address – check out this new You Tube video.

Frankfort Emperor's New Clothes

Sen. Tom Buford probably isn't going to get the recognition he deserves for being the one NO vote on HB 1.

Pension controversy will outlive reform session

When Warren Rogers started a retirement plan for his employees more than thirty years ago, he never seriously considered offering a defined benefit program like Kentucky provides state and local government workers.

“Those plans are built on an assumption that growth never ends,” Rogers, president of W. Rogers Company in Lexington, said.

Defined-benefit plans offer employees retirement pay based on years of service. As costs rise over time, any expenses not paid by investment gains become the responsibility of the employer. On the other hand, defined contributions pre-fund an investment account with employee and employer contributions. The employee is then responsible for investment gains or losses in the account.

Public-employee fringe benefits are at the heart of an odd controversy during the Kentucky General Assembly’s special session, which began Monday. Despite nearly unanimous floor votes for a reform package of Kentucky’s generous health and pension plans this week, wide divisions persist on what needs to come next for the government offerings. The state is languishing under a nearly $30-billion shortfall in its public employee benefit accounts.

While House Bill 1 makes some changes to benefits for newly hired state and local employees after September 1, it depends heavily on new dollars from the state‘s General Fund and merely slows the growth rate of the huge shortfall. The new anticipated contributions haven’t received much public discussion mostly because no one knows how high the numbers will go.

In a floor speech Monday, House Speaker Jody Richards tried to sound hopeful.
He said “the structural changes we are making will prevent the system from going bankrupt provided that future legislators have the will to fund the system at an actuarially acceptable level as statutorily required by this legislation.” Then he added that “investment performance will need to be improved.”

All that means if increasingly higher amounts of money are poured into public retirement funds each year, health-care costs don’t get too far out of control and investment returns improve, the benefits system may not become insolvent. Insolvency would necessitate putting in even more taxpayer dollars.

Rogers is skeptical about the legislators‘ plan.

“That’s crazy,” he said. “That’s no reform at all. Uncertainty like that would run my company out of business. Frankly, a well-funded defined contribution plan properly invested can provide much more retirement benefit to an employee than a company pension. There is a reason that virtually the entire private sector has converted to defined contribution plans and the public sector remains mired in the past.”

Indeed, House Bill 1 specifies required contributions from taxpayers into the benefits accounts for the next two decades, starting at 44 percent of the full funding amount in 2011 and increasing 4 percentage points a year until reaching 100 percent in 2025. Mandating taxpayer contributions is a first for Kentucky, which has fallen far short of making such payments for the last quarter of a century.

But Rep. Bill Farmer, R-Lexington, said future General Assemblies will be free to ignore what really amounts to a funding suggestion. Farmer sees an ulterior motive in the hesitancy to address exploding health-care spending for government employees.
“If they decide not to make those payments in a future General Assembly, they just won’t make them and there is nothing anyone can do about it,” Farmer said. “I think (House leaders) are counting on the federal government to take over the health-care system sooner rather than later and then those benefits won’t be their problem anymore.”

Rep. Bob Damron, D-Nicholasville, questioned where the extra money will come from for Kentucky to catch up with escalating expenses for existing employees and retirees.

“Are we going to cut back on spending or raise taxes or both?” he said. “I don’t know.”

Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville, has been sounding the alarm for public-employee benefits reform for years.

“If we don’t change the benefits package to match what is available in the private sector, taxpayers will be paying for benefits none of them could ever afford,” Williams said. “(The funding deficit) will cause a huge decrease in services or a huge increase in taxes.”

He also charged House leaders with having already mapped out a plan to pay for benefits with new tax dollars.

“Obviously, they want to increase taxes,” he said.

That sentiment concerns Kathy Gornik, president of Thiel Audio in Lexington, who sees the issue as one of fairness that puts at risk Kentucky companies‘ ability to compete.

“As a business owner who struggles to earn a profit, I find it unconscionable that the Kentucky state Legislature is jeopardizing Kentucky's financial and economic future by continuing to borrow money and raise taxes to fund the unsustainable state employee pension plan,” Gornik said. “I don't see why state workers should have better benefits than those workers who are creating the wealth that makes their very existence possible.”

President Williams expressed optimism that Kentuckians will ultimately realize the problems caused by offering “unsustainable” benefits. He predicted that every state will move toward more viable defined contribution plans because employers can “pre-fund” their portion of the benefit and then it becomes the employee’s responsibility.

Mark Wilden, a vice president at Merrill Lynch in Lexington, said the sooner Kentucky makes that change, the better it will be because of how rapidly the costs are increasing.

“They don’t have a choice but to switch over,” Wilden said. “Most of these defined benefit plans have fallen apart.”

Bird poop can land on your tax dollars here

As if we don't have enough problems already, we have spent $200,000 for a ten foot statue of Abraham Lincoln that will stand in Springfield, Kentucky.

If he stands there long enough, maybe they will give him free health insurance and a pension.

U of L’s Math Preparation of Elementary School Teachers Faulted

USA Today reports in “Teachers’ schools flunk math prep,” that a new study on the education of elementary school teachers gives generally unsatisfactory grades to education school programs around the country.

The report, “No Common Denominator, The Preparation of Elementary Teachers in Mathematics by America’s Education Schools” only includes one Kentucky education school, the University of Louisville, one of Kentucky’s most selective colleges. As a selective school, you would hope the U of L would be at the top of the heap in any sort of education school analysis; however, that isn’t the case. U of L got an unsatisfactory score for its preparation of elementary education teachers due to inadequate math course offerings (page 32).

Since the U of L does not pass muster, chances are slim that other education schools in this state are doing any better.

A lot of people in this state are shocked to learn something that has been a hot topic in legislative discussions: Kentucky only requires one math course for elementary school teachers – something called “elementary math,” which is taught below the level of college algebra. I have said for a long time that this isn’t adequate. Now, other, better informed voices are echoing that concern.

The people in charge of educating Kentucky’s school teachers need to spend some serious time with the No Common Denominator report. Our kids deserve no less.

Shock: Legislator wants to raise taxes

Louisville Courier Journal reporter Stephenie Steitzer and CNHI News columnist Ronnie Ellis both caught up with House Budget Chairman Harry Moberly yesterday and reported the news today that he wants tax increases (here and here.)

We have heard it all before.

That may throw fuel on the fire of those concerned Gov. Steve Beshear is going to call a special session to raise taxes. But what we really need to be talking about is this:

Hillary Clinton spent it like you were paying

Sen. Hillary Clinton sent out an email to everyone on her list today looking for a bail-out of her overdrawn campaign account.

The Kentucky legislature is pouring out, as part of HB 1, $56 million it doesn't have to city and county governments, who will then get it from you. The only difference is that you can refuse to pay off Hillary's profligacy. But what happens in Frankfort this week, make no mistake, is coming out of your pocket.

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride

The Legislative Research Commission released yesterday the actuarial analysis that leads Speaker Jody Richards to state that HB 1 is the solution to all our pension woes.

Senate President David Williams adds perspective to the situation. If we pour enough extra money into public employee pensions and health benefits for the next two decades (and invest the money really well), then the current level of benefits is sustainable.

Otherwise, perhaps not.

More School Choice Coming to Louisville

It looks like Louisville school superintendent Sheldon Berman and his board of education may be listening to us. The Courier Journal reports a lot more choice schools are being proposed for Kentucky’s largest school district.

Viagra may cause headaches, heart attacks

Pitchman Jody Richards sounded like he was reading one of those pharmaceutical commercials yesterday when he took to the House floor to sell HB 1.

He started off with how great it is going to be after the bill passes. He said "make no mistake about it, this is not merely a step forward. This is a giant leap in the direction of long-term financial stability."

Then he transitioned into the part that sounded like the legal disclaimer telling you that, in addition to all the sex you might be having, you could die.

He says in the clip below that we will not go bankrupt if (and only if) future legislators pour much more money into the system than he has done and investment returns get much better.

Sure, and if we were all twenty five years old, no one wouldn't need those little blue pills, either.

Transparency fight just beginning

Getting Kentucky government officials to show us what they are doing with our resources is a battle that will never end. Now that state officials are moving on financial transparency, we need to generate some momentum on the local government and school board level.

The goal is to have access to public financial information of all kinds in the state as readily available to citizens as the nearest internet connection. The more complete this information is, the more justification will be necessary for public spending of all kinds.

Now we need the legislature to post legislators' committee votes online each day so we can more easily track who is doing what on the laws we will all have to live under.

Not so fast, Governor Steve Beshear

Senate President David Williams watched Gov. Steve Beshear talk tonight about special session pension "reform." Then he called a brief press conference in which he spelled out the need to do much, much more. We are nowhere near correcting the decades of overspending on public employee fringe benefits, but at least Williams is headed in the right direction.

In the following clip, he talks about how increasing the taxpayer contributions to the benefits systems will require Kentuckians to see how bad the gold-plated benefits have damaged the state's fiscal health. That might work.

What Bill Goodman Was Reading

If you tuned into Kentucky Tonight, you heard Bill Goodman reading from one of my reports about CATS.

Check this out if you want to know about education’s biggest scam and how CATS has nothing to do with high levels of student proficiency in 2014. This report shows that schools can escape all sanctions in 2014 with proficiency rates such as 39.13 percent in math and 0.0 – yes ZERO – percent in writing!

Where’s All the Writing Improvement?

Kentucky Tonight just held a discussion of the pending CATS Task Force that will be looking at the state’s public school assessment program. It was three educators against our friend Martin Cothran from the Family Foundation, so the educators were outnumbered.

One item the educators brought up repeatedly was how much improvement they have seen in writing. That’s just more evidence our educators see too much in too little, so I called in to the show to share the latest results on eighth grade writing from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). I thought you might like to know about that, too.

The NAEP 2007 Writing Report Card says Kentucky’s eighth graders made no statistically significant change in writing performance between 2002 and 2007. That’s half a decade of flat performance.

The 2007 NAEP proficiency rate for our eighth graders was only 26 percent – just one of four Kentucky kids scored proficient for writing. That was a statistically insignificant change from the 25 percent proficiency reported in 2002. In fact, since 1998, a decade ago, the NAEP eighth grade writing proficiency rate in Kentucky has only gone up 5 points – but there is a catch.

While posting its miniscule score improvement between 1998 and 2007, Kentucky’s exclusion rate for students with learning disabilities shot up faster than anywhere else in the country, rising from two to six percent of the entire NAEP raw sample of students. This big increase probably means most, if not all, of the tiny writing score rise since 1998 is an illusion. Scores look a bit better if you simply prevent a lot more of your weakest kids from taking the test.

By the way, over that same period, the CATS said our middle school kids “on-demand” writing sample, which was collected in a manner similar to the sort of testing conditions the NAEP uses, exploded from just 5.92 percent proficient to 42 percent proficient. So, CATS went from being graded far too hard to being graded much easier than the NAEP. That’s just perfect if you are an education person trying to make yourself look good.

It’s terrible if you are a member of the public searching for the truth about how schools are really doing.

And, all of this shows how CATS just confuses educators and the public alike.

We want the transparency David Williams has

In today's Senate Transportation Committee meeting, President David Williams said he has a agreement with the Cabinet that stops spending until a judge rules on their disagreement about the vetoed road projects.

I'm guessing Williams will receive reports, perhaps electronically, on any road spending to ensure that the agreement in upheld. That would be spending of our money. Because of that, Kentucky taxpayers deserve the same consideration.

Stop state-supported racism

The Kentucky Commission on Human Rights is the taxpayer-supported government agency that definitely should count the news release below as a contribution to the Barack Obama campaign.


And they should have to back up the following statement with facts (as opposed to just tax dollars):

“While we are pleased to see this progress, black elected officials continue to represent only 1.8 percent of all elected officials in the nation,” he said.

...

Every African American alive today benefits from the work and sacrifices of people in the NAACP, Johnson said. Young people need to take the charge, join the NAACP and ensure its vital future, he said."

Spinning Kentucky's games of chance

Casino legislation will never pass in Kentucky as long as the two big groups pushing it both stay at the table. The horse industry people want to maximize new revenue for the horse industry with casinos at the tracks and the big government people want to maximize revenue for the state.

The key word is "maximize" and both groups can't get what they want at the same time. That doesn't stop Lexington Herald Leader columnist Larry Dale Keeling from trying again:

"Kentucky needs to expand its gambling options. Keeping our signature racing industry competitive with states where purses and breeding incentives are supplemented by revenue from casinos and racinos is one of the big reasons such expansion is justified. Slots Bill could do that.

But staying competitive at our tracks and on our breeding farms isn't the sole reason we need expanded gambling.

Kentucky needs more revenue, at state and local levels, to pay for education, health care, social services, public protection and all the other services we expect our government to deliver."

What's funny is the same people who make the case for higher cigarette taxes because of sick smokers who wind up on the dole don't want to talk about casino gamblers who game themselves onto welfare unless it is in the context of creating a government bureaucracy that takes the first half of the gambling house's cut.

Perhaps when "health advocates" and "casinos 'for the children'" supporters can agree to cut or eliminate welfare payments to people who willingly smoke or gamble their way to dependency, we might wind up with cleaner air and a more robust tourism and entertainment industry.

Then again, if we keep banning private business owners from allowing smoking in their buildings, all bets are off. Something for the big government people to -- I hope -- think about.

A special interest in tax policy

I'm hoping Sen. Barack Obama's campaign will pull down this page from his Web site when they realize how stupid it sounds, so I took a screen shot of it and put it here.

It gets better. In the essay that goes along with this very revealing headline, the writer says:

"Few economists have any real understanding of the tax system. Most family businesses and entrepreneurs pay taxes at individual income tax rates, that now go up to 35%. The only family businesses and entrepreneurs paying corporate income tax rates are those where tax code complexity or costs prevent a family business from converting to a "pass-through" entity where the owners, rather than the business, pay the income tax. Thus, the corporate income tax rate must remain tied to the top individual income tax rate. If that rate goes to 39.6% when the Bush tax cuts expire, the corporate rate should also be increased."

Priceless.

Is this how you want God put back in schools?

We've all heard about clubs, teams, or student organizations in public schools like Beta Club, Math Team, or National Honor Society.

How about Baptist Club, Methodist Team, or, perhaps, Koran Scripture Chasers?

Any of these -- or many more -- could become a reality if Kentucky House Bill 8 of 2009, pre-filed yesterday by Rep. Melvin Henley, becomes law. It would also require school districts to create policies to facilitate prayers at school events and throughout the school day by volunteer student "leaders."

What's YOUR Beef with CATS?

With our new blog up and running with a properly functioning comments feature, I have a question for our readers.

What do you think are the biggest problems with the state's public school assessment program, commonly known as CATS?

I know what I think is wrong, but I want to hear what you are worried about. If you list each concern separately with a short explanation, I may be able to cut and paste your responses right into future Bluegrass Institute publications. If I can use your name with that, please let me know, otherwise the comments will be anonymous.

So, it's your turn. Please tell us what you think. The kids of Kentucky are counting on you.

Board Ditches Costly, Ineffective Discipline Program

When you spend nearly a million dollars over three years for a student discipline program, you have a right to expect some results. Apparently, the results didn’t come in Christian County, where the Kentucky New Era (subscription required) quotes Christian County Board of Education member Shelia Cottrell as saying, “We’re not too far off from a shooting.” So the Positive Behavior Supports (PBS) program has been discontinued.

It must have been quite a board meeting. Aside from Ms. Cottrell’s frightening comment, there were charges that the PBS program was behind teachers leaving the system and that administrators were deliberately underreporting discipline violations and principals were falsifying data. This district has some real problems, but a hugely expensive fad program clearly wasn’t the cure.

Welcome to the Bluegrass Policy Blog

Thanks for coming by the Bluegrass Policy Blog, the official blog of the Bluegrass Institute.

We'd like to think we have made a little bit of a difference in Kentucky over the last five years, but the truth is that a lot of times our efforts feel like spitting in the ocean.

Kentucky is at so many crossroads, it is hard to know where to start. Our government spends way beyond it's means to shuffle overpaid bureaucrats around in shiny cars fueled by gas we buy so they can provide services we can't afford to people who won't work to acquire them on their own.

Our public school system is overrun with graft and manipulation, and the whole government is ruled by a tradition of secrecy and lies that would destroy the average business or household in a matter of days.

Try as we might to draw attention to these things, we can't do it without you. If you have concerns about what your government does to your wallet, your business, your liberty, your family, and what that all might mean for our shared future, let us share our concerns and spread the word together to force positive change in Kentucky.

Now is not the time for good men to be silent.

(One small thing you might do is sign up for email updates at the top of this page on the right. Thanks again.)

Ashland Daily Independent Gets It on Dropouts

There’s nothing here we have not said before, but the Daily Independent still has a nice summary on an enduring problem in “Dropouts cost state millions of dollars in lost revenue.”

For the CATS Task Force, if the CATS school assessment program really is improving things, as some of you are already claiming, then why isn’t that showing up in other areas like much stronger graduation rates and much stronger college preparation?

We’ve seen a little improvement in grad rates, but there is disturbing evidence that this is mostly just social promotion.

How about some real bang for our hard earned bucks? Kentuckians have been waiting more than 18 years. As the Daily Independent points out, so far we have just been paying twice – once for an education system that isn’t “carrying the mail” for our kids, and again – heavily – for the social costs of failing those kids.

CATS Task Force Primer – Writing Tests

The “we-must-test-writing” fanatics in Kentucky have a new credibility problem.

Two years ago the SAT college entrance test added a mandatory writing sample to the traditional multiple-choice tests in verbal and math skills. The first study of how well that might have improved the SAT’s prediction of college success is now available. It looks like the very time-consuming SAT writing element adds virtually nothing, as the New York Times reports.

Of course, the Times has been having credibility problems of late, so we went to the College Board’s Web site to see if the newspaper got it right (The Board creates the SAT). This time, the Times is on target. The College Board itself admits, “The results show that the changes made to the SAT did not substantially change how predictive the SAT is of first-year college performance.”

So, here is a question for those folks who are about to sit down and debate possible changes to our CATS school assessments. We know writing is important. But, if the people at the College Board did not come up with a writing test that adds value to the multiple-choice parts of the SAT, why do we in Kentucky think that the excessive time and cost required to test written answers is an essential part of our assessment program? The issue isn’t the need for writing; it is the question of whether we can effectively assess and score written answers in CATS a way that adds accuracy and value to the overall assessment scores. The College Board just found out they are not getting much from evaluating writing, and I remain unconvinced that Kentucky gets much value from the huge amount of time and money spent on written answers in CATS, either.

What the heck, take the rest of the month

The Bluegrass Institute has decided that after our wild success with "Go Bankrupt Slower in Kentucky" Day on Wednesday, we should just go ahead and extend it through all next week. This is in honor of the fake pension fix lawmakers are cooking up starting Monday in Frankfort.

So enjoy "Go Bankrupt Slower in Kentucky" Week starting Monday. Maybe we should follow it up with a parade. And fireworks.

Kentucky needs this Education President

Kentucky remains one of the last states in the nation to fail at providing any kind of school choice innovations for students.

Unfortunately, this issue has become an intensely partisan one with, primarily, Democrats standing opposed alongside teachers union activists.

As Congress moves closer to discontinuing the Washington D.C. school voucher program, the Cato Institute has come up with video of a Democratic president whose open-mindedness on school choice would set his present-day party brethren on fire with rage.

For real.

(Thanks to The Club for Growth for the tip.)

Come on in, the freedom's fine!!

Jon Larson, Kentucky's Republican nominee in this year's sixth congressional district race calls people who are in this country without proper immigration documents "America seekers." He thinks they should be heralded and treated just like anyone else.

Well, sort of.

He told the Frankfort State Journal "they should be made to pay taxes and buy insurance."

Defining success way down for Kentucky schools

It's hard not to be skeptical of the task force set-up ostensibly to review all-important education assessment in state schools.

Officials say the study group will start examining the CATS program sometime in July. But if you listen to Kentucky Association of School Superintendents President Roger Marcum, they have already started on the wrong foot.

Marcum told the Lebanon Enterprise newspaper the manipulated, malignant, and moribund CATS has been "a success."

Really Roger? How so? I mean, what's your favorite part: the fact data applies to schools and not individual children, the fact teachers say the tests are getting easier every year, the fact there is no legitimate way to compare our results with those of other states, the fact that results get to schools too late each year to be of any value to curriculum planners, or is it the fact CATS costs millions of dollars more than a more valid assessment tool?

I'm just curious.


I'd love to see someone from the education establishment try to answer these questions, but it won't happen. They simply can't do it well enough to convince anyone who is looking at the facts.

More Homework for the CATS Task Force

Here are some thoughts on mathematics for the CATS Task Force recently named by Kentucky Commissioner of Education Jon Draud.

“Standards need to focus on a small enough number of topics so that teachers can spend months, not days, on them.” “…one illustration: in the early grades, top-achieving countries usually cover about four to six topics related to basic numeracy, measurement, and arithmetic operations. That's all. In contrast, in the U.S., state and district standards, as well as textbooks, often cram 20 topics into the first and second grades. That's much more than any child could possibly absorb.”

“…why do we have such unfocused, undemanding, and incoherent math standards? I attribute it to the long tradition in the U.S. of shared responsibility in curriculum decision-making, as well as a complex decentralized arrangement for schooling and curriculum development.”

“On the math portion of the 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, just seven percent of fourth- and eighth-graders in the U.S. attained the advanced level; in comparison, in Singapore (the top achieving nation), 38 percent of fourth-graders and 45 percent of eighth-graders attained the advanced level….”

“…the virtual absence of input from the academy (i.e., university professors and research mathematicians), make(s) defining the sequence of topics an exercise in democratic consensus making. Unfortunately, standards setting in the U.S. is more conducive to politically motivated, ad hoc approaches to content than to discipline-based ones.”

Truth time – I didn’t write these comments. Professor William H. Schmidt from Michigan State University did.

Now, here’s a surprise. He didn’t publish this in the Bluegrass Institute’s Web site. His thoughts are found in the American Federation of Teachers’ “American Educator” for Spring 2008.

AFT is the “other” teachers union we don’t hear much about in Kentucky. Maybe that’s too bad. It seems they pay some attention to improving the art and science of teaching rather than just constantly haranguing us for more money and better benefits.

Anyway, Task Force members, get reading!

Up WHAT creek without a paddle?!?!

Kentucky has the third highest ratio of government debt to gross domestic product of any state in the nation, according research done by James Hohman of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

Hohman compiled data from the US Census Bureau, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ establishment survey for work he is doing on a Michigan-based report, but he was struck by what he found for Kentucky.

"They’re a little lower when you use per capita and per payroll employment, but still in the top tier," Hohman said. "Anyway, it’s interesting to see the list be Massachusetts, New York, and Kentucky."

House Minority Whip Stan Lee (R-Lexington) agrees but says legislative leaders have little motivation to change.

"That's terrible company to be keeping," Lee said, referring to Massachusetts and New York. "There's still a real sense in Frankfort that Kentuckians aren't paying attention."

If we don't watch it we may even be moving up a spot on the government debt list. New York is embracing government transparency with a new website. In other states, showing taxpayers the government's contracts and spending has been shown to reduce wasteful practices. And that might wind up being a good thing for New York taxpayers.

"If New York can (show taxpayers where their money is going)" asked Covington City Commissioner Steven Megerle, "why can't Kentucky?"

Happy "Go Bankrupt Slower In Kentucky" Day!

If your family faced crushing debt, you had very little money in the bank, and your bills exceeded your income by $5000 a month, would you get excited and congratulate yourself if you lowered your expenses to be only $4500 more than your income each month?

That is what the state government is doing with "pension reform." And they hope you don't notice that when it is time to pay the piper, it is your pocket they will be going into. (Actually, they don't care if you notice "pension" costs will soon be going up $1 billion a year faster than we can pay them in a state that "makes" $9 billion a year. They are counting on you not to tell everyone you know.)

The General Assembly goes into special session June 23, but real pension reform, the kind that might prevent us from having expenses we can never pay, isn't even on the table for discussion.

Will Kentucky lawmakers raise their own pay?

A rising star in Republican Party circles appears to be about to give himself a Veepstakes-ectomy when he allows a large state legislator pay increase to become law later this month.

Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana has said he does not support but will not veto a bill which has passed his state's House and Senate that will double state legislator salaries. That means rather than sign it, he will allow the bill to become law without his signature. His constituents' anger doesn't appear to be soothed by the distinction.

Kentucky, in the 2008 legislative session, saw but did not pass a bill that would have removed legislators' fingerprints from their pay increases. But Kentucky legislators like to hide their goodies in pension bills. For example, there was HB 299 in 2005 which allows long-time state lawmakers who accept executive branch appointments to receive a very healthy pension boost. That bill was allowed to become law by former Gov. Ernie Fletcher without his signature.

Tell us it is raining

The Kentucky Department of Education still doesn't have a start date for it's task force on CATS testing and we are almost into July.

Someone has to point out that the education bureaucracy isn't even doing a credible job of pretending to look at our miserable assessment program, which is what they would be doing if the task force had started it's work by now.

The Senate tried to kill the disgraceful CATS program earlier this year and the educrats responded with a promise to set up a study group to look at how to improve it.

How’s That Again About Needing Higher Teacher Salaries to Improve Education?

Kentucky’s education crowd has inundated us with assertions that teachers salaries need to be increased before we can attract better teachers. Well, “Amazing Teacher Facts” from the Wall Street Journal (almost universally recognized as the WSJ) says that just isn’t so.

The WSJ reports that surprisingly high proportions of students from universities like Yale, Harvard and Georgetown (about one out of 10 from each college’s 2008 graduating class!) applied for Teach for America (TFA) entry level teaching jobs with starting salaries as low as $25,000.

How come?

These TFA applicants are smart – too smart to put up with the bureaucratic nonsense and mind numbingly un-intellectual courses found in traditional teacher preparation and certification programs. The TFA program bypasses the standard certification process with an alternative, fast-track certification program for college graduates with excellent subject matter expertise.

TFA teachers also have something else going for them – they know the course subject matter well – something we too often cannot say about conventionally trained teachers. You can’t teach a subject well if you don’t know it well.

The unions naturally hate TFA, charging it is just a “band aid” that doesn’t keep new teachers on board long enough to learn the trade. The WSJ doesn’t buy that, however. The WSJ reports those TFA-taught students perform significantly better on state exams than students from traditionally trained teachers’ classrooms do. Also, an amazingly high two-out-of-three TFA teachers STAY in the education world. They are not moving on to something else. That stands in sharp contrast to conventionally certified teachers who tend to leave the profession in very high numbers in the early teaching years.

Anyway, so much for the urban education legends we’re hearing in Kentucky. It’s not the pay, folks, it’s the nonsense that keeps our kids from getting the better educated teachers they need.

Editorial goes easy on Jon Draud

The Lexington Herald Leader says today Kentucky's Education Commissioner Jon Draud "is in a tough spot" because of the tiny amount of bad press he has gotten for trying to fill his pockets with your money.

Sure, the paper brings back up Draud's lies about the car you bought him. But they let him slide on the fifty days of sick leave he left on the table when he retired from the Ludlow school district.

What the editors fail to mention is that Draud lost those fifty free days until the legislature gave them back to him earlier this year with HB 470.

If you were mad about the $13,000 Draud got caught trying to take away from you, how mad are you going to be about the $40,000 he got away with?

“Homework” for the CATS Task Force

Last week, the Kentucky Department of Education released the names of people who will serve on its CATS Task Force to review Kentucky’s school assessment program. Before these people meet, they need to get smart on the inflated grading in CATS discussed in the videos linked below. If the Task Force fails to recommend changes to the CATS’ inflated scoring scheme as discussed in these videos, their work will be an automatic failure.

You can easily learn what’s wrong with CATS scoring by looking at these You Tubes. For the best understanding, watch all four videos in order, but if time is short, start with Part 3 and continue to view Part 4. Just click the links to start each part.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Googling common sense, Kentucky version

How many miles per gallon are you getting in your car if you have to pay for yourself and some whiny government official who thinks he is getting a bad deal because the General Assembly is talking about taking away his right to double dip in the public till?

The complainers know that if force them to put government spending on the internet, they will have to spend less feathering their own nests.

Secretary of State Trey Grayson nails it in the Louisville Courier Journal today:

"Every step toward electronic transparency means that citizens can be their own watchdogs. They can go online to see how much is being spent on what. How tax dollars are being spent should be public knowledge. Is there a better check on government waste than public scrutiny of expenditures?"

As more people get their information on the internet, it doesn't make sense to delay putting government information there.

What will it take to wake up Kentuckians?

If New Jersey and Louisiana can do it, why can't Kentucky? Why can't we wake up to the costs of corruption in our government, that is.

New Jersey is closer to the edge of self-imposed bankruptcy than we are. Louisiana needed a natural disaster of biblical proportions. Both needed some kind of catalyst to open their eyes to the damage their abusive political machines were doing to the many to benefit the few. What will Kentucky's be?

Kentucky taxpayers could save themselves a fortune by snapping to attention before the wolf gets to the door. Right now, he is at least in the driveway.

In New Jersey, public employee pensions have gotten the attention of the masses. In Louisiana, it was an attempt by legislators to raise their own pay.

Kentucky's unaccountable education bureaucracy spends money with insufficient oversight and fixes it's own report card every year. Kentucky's politicians increase spending on themselves and borrow by the billions when your money runs out. Secrecy in Frankfort is so entrenched, the media watchdogs can't even be bothered to push for more openness. "Needy" citizens have too little accountability for their bottomless bowls of entitlements. And "economic development" bureaucrats pick business winners and losers with money they take from those who they prefer to be on the losing end.

What do you think it will take to wake up Kentuckians and inspire them to rip control of their government away from the grubbing scoundrels who call the shots?

I think it might be abuse of taxpayer-provided and taxpayer-purchased gasoline that really starts the ball rolling. Sure hope so.

Frankfort won't eat own foot when it can eat yours

Apparently, the Lexington Herald Leader editorial board is never going to understand what is really going on with the public employee fringe benefits disaster.

Today, as the shortfall in the state's employee benefits plans approaches $30 billion, an editorial bemoans one small effort to chip away at that mountain of debt.

The legislature has already decided to end the official double-dipping program within the judicial system and just as they are finally getting around to ending it in the rest of state government, the Herald Leader wants it back for the judges.

"What happens when a good program goes bad?

If it's as potentially useful to the public as the senior judge program, it should be rehabilitated."

The editorial suggests tinkering with the program will somehow make it better. But the editors are ignoring a basic fact: even in the freest nation on earth, government seeks to survive by growing. The only way for the citizenry to maintain their freedoms is to continuously fight to shrink government.

Perhaps after the fringe benefits black hole drowns all it's own resources and starts sucking in money from social services, the editors will start to understand the need for radical public benefits reform.

Someone else has figured the high school dropout rate business out

"Clearly no one wants to talk about this, but in Kentucky's current assessment and accountability system schools actually benefit from young people dropping out rather than having them perform at a low rate on the tests," he said. "No one wants to admit that's a problem, but it is a problem."

Terry Brooks, executive director of Kentucky Youth Advocates

Quoted in “Kentucky slips in six key areas,” Messenger-Inquirer, Owensboro, June 12, 2008 as provided by Kentucky School Boards Association News Service (subscription required).

When Kentucky's CATS assessment starts to really penalize schools for dropouts (right now, the penalty is trivial), maybe this will stop. By the way, Mr. Brooks, I have criticized this problem in CATS for years. Glad you are now on board on this important issue.

More dancing around pension facts from Frankfort

A day after Speaker Jody Richards told us full funding of our public employee benefits is just around the corner in 2025, we get more spin about how the problem might have something to do with poor investment returns. The truth is we are headed for the mother-of-all cash flow problems and will never have enough money to invest our way out of this hole even if we did have average investment talent on board.

The best way to get decent returns would be to fire all the fast-talking Wall Street types and put all our money in index mutual funds. Not only would that virtually guarantee higher returns, it would allow us to liquidate funds -- as we will have to do very soon -- without having to absorb losses due to untimely selling of assets.

All of this is just wasted effort, though, if we can't muster the political will to swiftly curtail our gold-plated public employee fringe benefits.

None dare call it welfare abuse

While state politicians are trying to let Kentucky's obese fringe benefits system bankrupt the state as they play at reform, two U.S. Congressmen from the Bluegrass State voted today to wreck our ability to provide unemployment insurance by tossing out billions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars.

Ten days after Stateline.org reported Kentucky is one of seventeen states teetering on the brink of insolvency in it's unemployment insurance fund, The U.S. House of Representatives voted 274-137 to spend more that $11 billion giving money to people who spent six months looking for a job and needed to go back into the till for more.

If either Rep. Ben Chandler or Rep. John Yarmuth had voted against this, the bill would have fallen short of the tally necessary to override a Bush veto. Thanks guys.

Depends on your definition of "solvency"

The General Assembly is getting a lot of ink for suggesting they have worked out a deal to fully fund the public employee benefits accounts by 2025.

This doesn't mean the fringe benefit disaster will go away in 2025.

Far from it.

In fact, all this agreement does is state today's legislators hope that in 2025 the General Assembly will put in an amount to keep the system from going further into the hole in that year.

The state will be insolvent well before we get to that point. The numbers that really matter are 87 and 81. In 2025, Speaker Jody Richards will be 87 and Gov. Steve Beshear will be 81. They will likely not care how bankrupt the state is then.

Quick Notes From Today's Board of Ed Meeting

Aside from Education Commissioner Jon Draud’s admission that he made a mistake with his now famous (infamous) state-supplied automobile (well-discussed in David’s blog below and in Courier-Journal news releases from reporter Toni Konz, who gets a tip of the hat for uncovering this mess), there are other comments of note from today’s meeting of the Kentucky Board of Education.

Jim Applegate from the Council on Postsecondary Education said that African-Americans entering Kentucky’s public postsecondary institutions had an incredibly high 80 percent requirement for remedial course work in at least one subject. Overall, the remedial rate for all entering freshmen is around 50 percent.

Applegate also says that Kentucky’s public school teachers still are not up to snuff on what kids need for college. Imagine that, after more than 18 years of education reform. That leads to the next item.

During a presentation on a new program called the “New Cities Institute,” the presenters pointed out that Kentucky’s education community isn’t talking to workforce and other leaders about what is needed for success in life, either.

Wow! How can teachers claim they are preparing kids for the real world when those same teachers are not talking to people working in the “real world?” No wonder college remediation is so extensive and the Bluegrass Institute continues to hear complaints from business that recent graduates are not ready for the workforce.

Clearly, some very big gaps remain between promises made when KERA was enacted in 1990 and the limited success we have seen to date.

"Affordability" is the new black

When politicians talk about making something affordable, what they often mean is they want to spend more tax money on it. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on health insurance is a high profile example.

And so here comes Kentucky Auditor Crit Luallen with her two cents (or actually, yours) on higher education:

"Kentucky’s policy makers must provide adequate funding to ensure that tuition is set at a level that makes postsecondary education accessible to all residents. More Kentuckians must have postsecondary degrees if we are to attract the jobs of the 21st Century and increase the quality of life for all our residents."

Examples of government largesse having a perverse impact on health care are plentiful for anyone who wants to see them. And now we have data raising questions about the assumption that government making college "more affordable" is even necessary.

"In other words, the college-entrance-aged population consists almost entirely of people who either entered college or were not academically qualified to enter college."

Should we cut waste in order to lower costs? Sure. But lack of government spending isn't really one of the things keeping people from getting a higher education.

Why Kentucky education needs transparency

Secretary of State Trey Grayson joined the government transparency movement because he saw it as the right thing to do. Education Commissioner Jon Draud should do it so he doesn't have to get his butt kicked again.

It has been widely reported in the last week that Draud ordered $13,000 in extras for his taxpayer-provided car, then lied about it, then said it was no big deal, and today agreed that it was a bad idea that he will reimburse us for.

This all happened because Louisville Courier Journal reporter Toni Konz got a tip and did an open records request. If, instead, Draud knew his little goody grab would be posted to the internet along with everything else he does on the job, he would not have faced the temptation to try to get one over on the taxpayer.

Treating public education like a tricked-out car

The Kentucky Department of Education has a press release out about the task force to justify the status quo on the state's ridiculous CATS testing.

From the release:

"The Task Force on Assessment and Accountability will review the Commonwealth Accountability Testing System (CATS) and provide a blueprint for the system’s progress in the future to ensure that the system meets the best interests of public school students.
Education Commissioner Jon E. Draud asked statewide organizations, partner groups and leaders of the Kentucky Senate and House of Representatives to name members to the task force."

What we are talking about here is a simple definition of terms. If you define "meets the best interests of public school students" as feeds more money to a bunch of overfed bureaucrats, then you can imagine that a group of people Draud set up himself will want things to stay pretty much as they are. Besides, they have to make testing results turn out a certain way for the next six years. Can't go messing with that now, can we?

Pending NCLB Rules May Make Kentucky Honest on Graduation Rates

Here is some more about graduation rate games in Kentucky, this time presented in a You Tube video.

Last month the US Department of Education filed a sweeping notice of intent to tighten many of the loopholes in NCLB. To see how Kentucky has been playing games with NCLB graduation rates, check out this You Tube.

Is Kentucky Socially Promoting Public School Graduates?

The new Nonacademic Report is out from the Kentucky Department of Education. The state reports that the high school graduation rate is up very slightly with a corresponding slight reduction in dropout rates.

But, maybe the news really isn’t so good.

For one thing, the report itself admits the percentages dropped slightly for the proportion of 2007 high school graduates who made a successful transition to adult pursuits such as work, the military, or college. In addition, the percentage of students going on to college in Kentucky also dropped a bit – a statistic guaranteed to upset the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education and its member universities.

But, another key statistic isn’t in the report. I had to calculate this one myself using graduation counts from the new report and the counts of Kentucky public high school students who have taken the ACT college entrance test in recent years.

I have been assembling those public school ACT test taker counts over the years from annual data files created by the ACT for the Kentucky Office of Education Accountability. Those files are made available to the public through the offices of State Senator Jack Westwood (who gets a tip of the Bluegrass Institute hat for this effort to improve transparency in government).

So, what did I find? This figure tells the tale of what has happened since the early years of Kentucky’s CATS school testing program.



(Note: Corrected from Earlier Post)

There was an upward spurt in the percentage of each graduating class that took the ACT for a few early CATS years, but we have lost almost all of that advantage in recent years. The decline coincides with the increased pressure from No Child Left Behind to improve graduation rates, which are a federally accountable statistic under that legislation.

Do the recent drops in percentages of ACT test participation hint that we are graduating more students, but with poorer preparation? Certainly at a time when there is great pressure to increase college attendance in this state, the ACT test-taking pattern isn’t encouraging. Coupled with this year’s reduced college-going rate and somewhat lower transition to adult life rates, there could be small clues here that socially promoting students to a diploma may be increasing in Kentucky. The trend isn’t all that large at present, but it certainly is something to be concerned about. And, a drop in ACT taking patterns isn’t what Kentucky needs.

Grad Rate Reporting Nonsense

In a nice bit of timing, the new “Graduations Counts 2008” report from Education Week newspaper issued less than a week after the Kentucky Department of education released its own “Nonacademic Data Report” for Kentucky’s public schools. The new Education Week data exposes some very disturbing holes in what we are being told about the performance of our schools.

For example, the Graduations Count Web articles include a special Kentucky section that allows us to answer the question about how well Kentucky’s education leaders really inform us about a critical issue – high school graduation rates. Unfortunately, the answer is – not well at all.

The official report from our state educators claims the statewide high school graduation rate for Kentucky’s Class of 2005 was 82.86 percent. Education Week’s Kentucky section has a sort of “lie meter” on Page 7 that shows the real rate was much lower – over 11 points lower – at just 71.5 percent. Nationally, Kentucky ranks below the median in 29th place among the 50 states.

There is more interesting information from Ed Week.

While the national spread between graduation rates for boys and girls is 7.5 points in favor of the ladies, here in Kentucky the spread is notably higher at 9.8 points. Why is KERA less successful with boys than girls?

And, KERA is really unfriendly to American Indians in Kentucky. Their graduation rate is a depressing 21.8 percent here as opposed to a national rate of 50.6 percent.

Hispanics in Kentucky also do much more poorly than the national average with a graduation rate disparity of 49.4 percent versus 57.8 percent.

Kentucky’s whites also graduate at a rate 5.2 points below the national average of 77.6 percent.

Only Kentucky’s blacks do slightly better than their national counterparts, but their graduation rate of just 58.2 percent is hardly a testament to KERA.

Not surprisingly, you won’t find these minority graduation rates in the state’s Nonacademic Data Report. You have to go to more honest sources like Education Week if you want that information. Here in Kentucky, our educators prefer to continue using data that has been officially audited and found unreliable -- which is how Kentucky comes up with an inflated 82.86 graduation rate in the first place.

Richard Innes

Why do we let our schools keep books closed?

The College of DuPage in Illinois is larger than Morehead State and smaller than Eastern Kentucky University. But it has demonstrated more guts than all of Kentucky's colleges and universities in that it is willing to put it's expenditures on the internet for taxpayers to see.

Is there a Trey Grayson anywhere in Kentucky education?

Even more justification for scrapping CATS

An Education Week article comparing the actions of Kentucky education officials to those of troubled mortgage borrowers somehow failed to gain the attention of Kentucky's mainstream media this past week.

The article described how several states -- Kentucky is highlighted, but not alone -- have declined to get serious about improving education standards and now face having to take drastic measures to comply with federal requirements:

"While those may be legitimate reasons to postpone ambitious achievement goals, states may also have made their decisions based on political considerations, said Kevin Carey, the research and policy manager for Education Sector, based in Washington."

...

“My guess is that those decisions were made with the reauthorization calendar firmly in mind,” said Mr. Carey, who compared the achievement timelines to adjustable-rate mortgages that offer homeowners low monthly payments in the short term. “They thought Congress would come along and refinance it for them.”

The Kentucky Department of Education, of course, is still in denial. KDE spinmeister Lisa Gross could muster a stiff upper lip, but little else:

"Kentucky educators know the state is expecting big increases starting in the current school year, Ms. Gross said, and are working to make their federal goals.

“Many schools are well aware of the rapidly approaching deadline for proficiency and are doing things to ensure that they are positioned to meet those goals,” said Ms. Gross. “Staff here is monitoring the progress closely, so that we can provide interventions and other services if needed.”

What this means, really, is that Kentucky's illegitimate CATS testing program will be dumbed-down dramatically over the next six years to create the appearance of rapid educational improvement.

A legislative effort to replace the state's woefully manipulated testing program failed earlier this year. Does anyone know how Gov. Steve Beshear's "study" of CATS is going?

Small transparency step, giant Kentucky leap

Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson gained national attention today by announcing his office's willingness to post it's checkbook on the internet.

Indeed, the site is available (along with May's expenditures) right here.

Americans for Tax Reform's Grover Norquist said “on behalf of Kentucky taxpayers, I congratulate Secretary of State Grayson for taking the initiative to provide greater accountability by making expenditures available to public scrutiny. Taxpayers fund every expense made by government – they deserve to track exactly how their tax dollars are spent. Other agencies should follow Secretary Grayson’s example, and the legislature and Gov. Beshear should move swiftly to enact Rep. DeCesare’s spending transparency legislation.”

Rep. Jim DeCesare sponsored HB 105 in the 2008 General Assembly. The bill did not receive a floor vote.