On Campus The education blog of the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer

It seems that somebody believes in second chances. A while back I linked to a story about how an entire high school’s faculty was axed because the school’s students weren’t performing well. Under a new agreement, the teachers are back on the job. Have a read here.

Coming this weekend are a couple stories I’ve been working on from the education beat. First, there’s a story about the retirement of Tom Purcell, the principal at Apollo High School for the last eight years and a teacher for more years than I’ve actually been on this Earth. Not only does he have an

That’s a fancy term for “broke.” Worse than being broke though, is not knowing how you can spend your money or even how much you’ve got. Right now, because the state legislature has yet to pass a budget, that’s the situation each and every school district finds itself in. Worse yet, there are possib

Here’s a couple bits I lifted out of a story I submitted today to run some time this weekend… The four goals are listed as student achievement, student involvement, parent and community involvement and professional growth and development for faculty and staff. “If you have the structure and overridi

In just a little bit, I’ll be heading out to Tamarack Elementary School, where the students are putting a pretty ambitious project into effect as part of their observation of Earth Day. Among their activities, the students will be planting flowers and helping put together a sensory garden that can b

Mind you, I’m all for encouraging kids to read, learn and expand their minds. However, I think that there’s a right way and a wrong way to do that encouraging. Now, a younger version of me would probably have hopped the nearest time machine, jetted into the future and is about to punch me right [...

For the past few days I’ve been researching and trying to chase down a story. With a little luck today, I’ll pull it off. The story is about charter schools and Kentucky’s renewal of the debate over whether or not they should be used in our state. According to the Web site uscharterschools.org, Kent

Kentucky was one of the 16 finalists for Race to the Top funding, a first cut at a piece of a $4.35 billion dollar pie that was slated for education out of the stimulus, or the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. But only two states, Delaware and Tennessee, were awarded first dibs. That went and

Wait, what? That’s right. If you pick your school right (and can get in), there are a few schools out there that will give an education, put a student to work (not too hard, mind you) and do it all for absolutely nothing. Don’t believe me? One of them happens to be in Kentucky. None [...]

Here’s yet another article on the cost of education. This one, however, talks about what I think is a legit problem in higher education. I myself can clearly remember when I was in college and the University of Kentucky saw year after year after year of double-digit percentage tuition cost increases