Commish Declares a New Direction

Following this week's meeting of the Kentucky Board of Education, Commissioner Terry Holliday declared a new direction for education in Kentucky on his blog. He touches on Senate Bill 1, common standards, and a new interim calculation of Kentucky's graduation rate.

This from Dr H's Blog:

A New Direction for the

Kentucky Board of Education

The Kentucky Board of Education meeting this week signaled a new direction for the board’s meetings. The agenda items at the meeting were a comprehensive set of strategies that will eventually lead to regulatory and possibly statutory changes to implement Senate Bill 1.

The board acted on major recommendations from a recent Office of Education Accountability study of mathematics programs in schools in the Commonwealth. A key requirement will be common course codes for core subjects. This is related to Senate Bill 1, since the Common Core Standards (an initiative of the Council of
Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association) will drive the need to have common course codes at the high school level...

Another key strategy is changing the definition for measuring high school graduation rates. The board approved regulatory changes that will allow use of a more standard graduation rate, which allows districts to disaggregate rates by ethnicity and gender. Kentucky will not be able to implement the national graduation rate, called a cohort graduation rate, which follows individual students from the 9th grade to graduation, until 2013-14; however, until that time, we must focus on preparing ALL children to graduate with the skills needed for college and career...