Transforming Education in Kentucky Task Force report finally out

It was promised before the end of the year, but, as the Herald-Leader just reported, the governor’s Transforming Education in Kentucky (TEK) Task Force report just released today, with most of the current legislative session already in the history books.

That’s probably not too much of a problem, considering that my first read shows there isn’t much new in this report.

Most of the ideas are pretty old hat things that have been floating around since KERA began. The rest is largely a warmed over “me too” sort of reiteration of already approved plans from Senate Bill 1 from 2009.

Actually, the presence of many recommendations almost amounts to an admission that many ideas in KERA have not worked out. Thus, while the report offers little that is new, there is plenty of evidence in it that much of the old isn’t working well, if at all.

I’ll have some more detailed thoughts shortly, but the biased makeup of this task force [no independent-thinking representatives from organizations like the Bluegrass Institute or the Family Foundation of Kentucky (which, notably, WAS on earlier task force efforts in education)] pretty much fore-ordained the outcome.

One clue to the real value of this report: the word “charter,” as in charter school, doesn’t appear. The group didn’t even consider one of the more successful crucibles for school change. It just mostly looked at the ‘same-old, same-old.’

One interesting final note: While this report is months late, the released file is titled “final_report_draft.pdf” It makes you wonder if this is really the “final, final” or just a draft that got posted by accident. Go figure!

All that educational progress: Part 2?

I’ve been assembling more comparison maps with the powerful NAEP Data Explorer tool from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Here is one I put together to show how Kentucky’s white students’ latest available NAEP writing performance compares to white students in other states that participated (five states shown in blue plus Washington, DC, didn’t participate in this voluntary assessment). I look at whites because they comprise 85 percent of the student population in Kentucky and because with demographics in other states now very different from Kentucky’s, simplistic comparisons of overall NAEP scores are misleading.


According to the NAEP Data Explorer, after all the time we spent on writing in Kentucky, as of 2007, white students in the 31 states shown in green, including a number in the South, were doing a better job than our white students. NAEP says with a 95 percent level of confidence that all states shown in green got writing scores that were statistically significantly higher than Kentucky’s on this sampled assessment.

Twelve states tied us, including Mississippi.

Only West Virginia did worse.

Now, how is that again about all the progress?

Gov. Beshear invites Kentuckians to TEK Talk forums

From the Governor’s news release:

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

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

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


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

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

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

Fordham study trashes education standards used in Kentucky

Says pending new standards should be MUCH better for us

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute just published comparisons of all the states’ existing education standards versus the new Common Core Standards that Kentucky is now adopting. The new standards were developed by a partnership of the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors’ Association.

The new standards will guide course development in Kentucky and also will be the basis for the new public school assessments the state plans to introduce in about a year.

The change comes none too soon for Kentucky’s children, because the Fordham report says our existing education standards are “among the worst in the country.”

Read more »

“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