Tagged: education

Twenty-nine Kentucky school districts plan to apply for a new round of Race to the Top grants. The U. S. Department of Education will dole out $400 million to districts this December. The DOE wants recipients to use the money to personalize student learning.  Paducah Independent Schools superintendent Randy Greene says that’s exactly the kind of funding his district needs.

Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday is warning districts to expect low scores in reading and math when the results of new state tests are revealed.  In a teacher newsblog post Tuesday, Holliday said scores will be lower in reading and math because the tests are based on benchmarks from new state guidelines adopted for English and mathematics.  Holliday says teachers shouldn’t be discouraged by the low scores, but use them as a basis for improvement.  He says the science and social studies results should be in line with past scores because that content has remained the same sin

The Murray State University office of regional outreach has allocated $158,000 to regional projects. The advisory council selected 10 projects in its 18-county service region, including grants for science, technology engineering and mathematics education and early childhood learning.

Construction has begun on a new Paducah School of Art location. Director Paul Aho tells the Paducah Sun this first phase of construction is set for completion in 2013. The building underway will stand in the city’s LowerTown district, housing the school’s ceramics program.

Kentucky's public high school seniors scored higher on the ACT college entrance exam than a year ago, but their overall performance remains below the national average. State education officials say the average composite ACT score rose to 19.5 for Kentucky's public high school class of 2012, up from 19.2 in 2011.

A Hopkins County lawmaker is among some state house Republicans questioning whether evolution should be a part of Kentucky’s standardized science tests. The Kentucky interim joint Education Committee debated the topic this week during a discussion of “end-of-course testing.” Republican State Representative Ben Waide of Madisonville says test questions about evolution help promote it as scientific fact and not theory.