News

The campaign to lead Indiana's education department is being watched as a referendum on school policies pushed by conservatives across the country.

Republican Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett is seeking a second term. Before being elected, Bennett was a longtime southern Indiana educator and former superintendent of Greater Clark County Schools.

He's opposed by Democrat Glenda Ritz, who is a suburban Indianapolis teacher and a former president of her local teachers' union.

A lawsuit filed against a West Virginia newspaper by a coal company has been resolved.

Murray Energy CEO Bob Murray sued the Charleston Gazette and reporter Ken Ward Jr. for a blog post where Ward mentioned Murray subsidiary Genwal Resources’ role in the 2007 Crandall Canyon mine disaster and Murray subsidiary Ohio Valley Coal Company’s more recent violations of the Clean Water Act.  As I reported back in August:

Kentucky veterans suffering from substance abuse who are charged with crimes will soon be able to enter a treatment program through a new statewide partnership.

The Veterans Treatment Court is starting in Louisville. It’s a partnership by the statewide drug courts, Morehead State University and the veterans’ administration.

A majority of veterans who commit crimes after ending their active duty do so because of substance abuse, District Judge David Holton said. So the state is setting up special courts to help.

Pledging to do what's right for Louisville, Congressman John Yarmuth is using his first and only TV ad in the Third Congressional District race to highlight his support of President Obama's health care law.

With little over a week until Election Day, the 30-second spot brags about the benefits of the Affordable Care Act, such as expanding coverage and banning the use of pre-existing conditions to deny insurance coverage.

Check it out:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans increased their spending in September at twice the rate their income rose, a sign of confidence in the economy.

A Kentucky educational review subcommittee has killed a regulatory change that would have removed readers from helping certain students with disabilities and English language learners on reading comprehension tests.

The new regulation would have brought the state in line with a majority of its peers, but the Education Assessment and Accountability Review Subcommittee found the changes deficient, despite the Kentucky Board of Education’s approval earlier this year.

A train derailed in southwestern Jefferson County this morning, and emergency personnel have reported that the chemical butadiene is leaking from a railcar. People living near Abbotts Beach Road in Jefferson County and Katherine Station Road in Bullitt County have been evacuated, and there's a shelter-in-place with a two-mile radius from the spill. Here are some things to know about the chemical that's leaking.

The Kentucky Department of Education will release the long-anticipated results Friday of its new accountability system, which is the commonwealth's largest educational reforms in the last two decades.

A recent New York Times article dredged up a controversy that's been going on in Wyoming since this spring. The issue at hand is whether the University of Wyoming caved to pressure from politicians and coal companies when it removed a piece of public art from its campus a year ahead of schedule.

Leading up to the Nov. 6 election, two political action committees (PAC) are supporting two separate Jefferson County Board of Education candidates. 

The Bluegrass Fund--formed this year to offer support to alternative candidates from those backed by the teachers union’s Better Schools Kentucky PAC--recently announced its endorsement for District 4 candidate Chuck Haddaway, and in a new radio ad airing this week is also supporting District 7 candidate Jonathan Robertson.