Education in Kentucky
[3] In 1997 Kentucky was estimated to have 40% of working age adults with "low literacy skill levels...likely to impede their personal advancement".
[8] Lexington, Kentucky ranks 10th among US cities for having a high percent of the population awarded with a college degree or higher.
Wealthy families had their children tutored at home or at small local "academies" that charged tuition.
Upscale academies became local finishing schools for girls, with an emphasis on social skills, music, dancing and embroidery.
The Commonwealth curriculum required that the student take four Advanced Placement courses (one English, one science or math, one foreign language, and one elective) and sit for the Advanced Placement exam in at least three of the four areas (and receive at least an 8 combined total score).
To be eligible, students must attain a grade point average of 2.5 or higher in a rigorous curriculum (which in most high schools is the honors or college prep level) defined by the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE), and attend college at an eligible institution in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
[21] The actual amount of the award is based on a combination of the student's grade point average and score on the ACT.
[27] In addition to the PBS schedule, KET now airs programming aimed at local audiences and educational series used by some colleges in Kentucky as telecourses.
The court mandated that the Legislature was to enact broad and sweeping reforms at a systemic level, statewide.
Based on psychometric concerns and lack of political support for KIRIS, 1998 legislation replaced KIRIS with the Commonwealth Accountability Testing System (or CATS; the acronym possibly inspired by the Kentucky Wildcats), using open-response and multiple-choice items, an on-demand writing prompt, a writing portfolio, and the TerraNova national norm-referenced test.
As part of the testing change, the state set new "cut point" scale scores for rating student work as novice, apprentice, proficient and distinguished.
From 1999 to 2006, Kentucky schools showed improvement on the state's CATS assessment in every subject, at every level, for every student group listed in disaggregated data reports.
[30] Most elementary schools improved at a pace strong enough that, if continued, they would have reached the proficiency goals set by the state for 2014.
[31] Major changes in CATS were made in 2007, including revisions to the content being tested, the years each subject is tested, the relative weight given to different topics, the relative weight given to multiple-choice and open-response questions, the national norm-referenced test included in school scores, and the "cut points" used to convert students' numerical scores to performance levels of novice, apprentice, proficient and distinguished.
Those changes broke the state's "trend line", meaning that scores cannot be compared to past years.
The National Assessment for Educational Progress is the most respected source for comparing Kentucky public school students to those in other states.
In the latest NAEP testing, Kentucky did exclude higher proportions of learning disabled students in reading and writing than was typical across the nation.
KYVL is supposed to enhance the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of resource sharing among Kentucky libraries by utilizing current and emerging technologies and providing access to digital information resources at lower cost per unit through cooperative statewide licensing agreements.
The KYVHS launched in January 2000 to serve as a statewide educational provider of those highly specialized courses that the smaller, rural school districts could not afford to offer on a regular basis.
[39] The KYVS offers the extended curriculum offerings for schools that might not otherwise be available (e.g., foreign language instruction or Advanced Placement approved courses), and alternatives for credit recovery, additional instructional support for at-risk youth and teacher professional development.
[40] After the Kentucky Virtual High School launched, other state agencies approached the Kentucky Virtual University to partner with the Council on Postsecondary Education create their own online learning portals: In March 2013, Governor Steve Beshear signed a bill into law that ultimately led to the mandatory school age for the entire state rising to 18 from its then-current 16.
Under the new law, local school boards had the power to decide whether to increase their dropout age.
If more than 55% of the state's districts (96 out of 174 at the time of the bill's passage) did so, the change would become mandatory statewide within four years of the threshold being met.
[43] The task force is responsible for analyzing specific components of Commonwealth Accountability Testing System (CATS) and determining how effective they are in meeting student needs.
[68] The Council creates a strategic plan every five years to track progress and set goals for Kentucky's postsecondary educational system.
The present strategic plan sets a goal for 60% of Kentuckians to earn a college degree or certification by the year 2030.
With a 3% increase in undergraduate credentials in 2018, the state is on target to achieve this goal if current trends continue.
