David Adams is having a lively debate (in the comments section) with someone about the merits of the Bluegrass Institute following a Courier-Journal editorial on the subject. Kentucky Pundit responded here, though I don’t actually agree with many of his arguments.

I’ll add only this: The work that Richard Innes has done examining achievement data from the Kentucky Department of Education has been quite revealing and has not been, to my knowledge, assailed publicly by any member of Kentucky’s education establishment.

But Innes is not so much lambasting the performance of public schools (though he clearly has criticized school performance) as he is lambasting the bureaucracy that has fudged the numbers on school performance on several occasions.

That many of Dick’s recommendations have been quietly adopted by KDE speaks to his status as a respected contributor to the education policy debate in Kentucky.

The fact that several ACT-designed tests are now being given to virtually every public school student in Kentucky is, in large part, the result of Dick’s efforts at getting credible tests into Kentucky’s public schools.