Kentucky's education failures
Caleb O. Brown at the Bluegrass Institute shows us why Kentucky's tragic education system won't (or can't) reform itself:
Research Report 338 published last year by the Legislative Research Commission found that while educators now devote more money to improving key educational outcomes, "spending for programs linked to specific accountability areas, such as reading and math core content, currently cannot be analyzed" due to misreporting of expenditures. The report stated that such misrepresentation "limits the ability to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of these programs."
For several spending categories at some schools, the commission found it impossible to determine where much of the money went, concluding in its report that "there is no way to identify the specific purpose of the expenditures or to evaluate the impact of the spending." Due to this atrocious accounting, it's likely that even a competent audit could not track the money.
The challenge remains clear: Lawmakers must find a way to hold Kentucky educators responsible to parents and taxpayers for the education of public-school students.
