Eric.ed.gov – Year 1 State Report: Kentucky

The Center on Standards, Alignment, Instruction, and Learning (C-SAIL) examines how college- and career-readiness (CCR) standards are implemented, whether they improve student learning, and what instructional tools measure and support their implementation. Established in July 2015 and funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S. Department of Education, C-SAIL has partnered with California, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Texas to explore their experiences with CCR standards-based reform, particularly regarding students with disabilities (SWDs) and English language learners (ELLs).This report examines how the state of Kentucky is continuing CCR standards implementation during a time of transition. As their state legislature mandates a review of the standards and accountability system every six years, the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) is in the midst of drafting potential revisions for public review and official implementation by summer 2017. For the purposes of this report and in keeping with C-SAIL’s focus, the authors concentrate on implementation of Kentucky’s English language arts (ELA) and math standards. Drawing on interviews with five key state officials across various KDE offices, the descriptive report synthesizes and analyzes those responses using the “policy attributes theory” (Porter, Floden, Freeman, Schmidt, & Schwille, 1988), a theoretical framework positing five attributes related to successful policy implementation (specificity, authority, consistency, power, and stability). The report is organized around six focal areas–standards and curriculum, assessment, professional development (PD), students with disabilities (SWDs), English language learners (referred to in this report by the KDE term English learners, or ELs), and communication and outreach. The authors report on each focal area through the lens of each policy attribute to help readers see how state officials identified areas of strengths and challenges related to standards implementation in Kentucky. [This report was written with Nelson Flores, T. Philip Nichols, Emily Plummer, Amy Stornaiuolo, and Laura Desimone.]