Wide-ranging education reform bill could go to Kentucky Senate Wednesday

Senate President Robert Stivers said he anticipates calling for a vote Wednesday legislation that would lead to large-scale changes in public K-12 education in Kentucky.

Senate Bill 1, sponsored by Sen. Mike Wilson, R-Bowling Green, has gotten attention because it would create a new review structure for state academic standards, which were initially based on the Common Core Standards. The bill would delete some aspects of statewide testing.

But its impact would be significant in several other areas.

The bill originally eliminated statewide social studies testing, but John Cox, Kentucky Senate majority communications director, said late Tuesday that an amendment had been filed to Senate Bill 1 that would restore testing in social studies.

Cox also said that the Commissioner of Education had been added to an academic standards review committee as a voting member. That was a request that State Sen. Reggie Thomas, D-Lexington, made last week at a committee meeting when he voted against the bill.

The bill would allow required high school arts and humanities course credit to be satisfied by optional electives from foreign language, voc-tech, or computer tech if design and creativity were incorporated into those classes.

Local control of school districts would be returned on several fronts.

In cases of persistently low achieving or priority schools, the Kentucky Department of Education currently evaluates the schools and monitors the improvement. Under the legislation, school districts would initially pursue the turnaround, training and support from an organization outside the Kentucky Department of Education.

If a school district with a priority school cannot locate a suitable organization to provide an audit, training or support, officials could request that the Kentucky Department of Education perform the audit and provide turnaround assistance.

There are also changes to the statewide teacher evaluation system. The state would continue to establish a statewide evaluation system for educators, but school districts would develop and implement it.

The legislation would change how the achievement gap of low income, disabled, and students learning the English language is determined.

The proposed legislation would replace a school’s self-evaluations called Program Review with a requirement for the principal, school-based council and superintendent to sign a letter of assurance about arts and humanities, practical living, writing and social studies.

A program review is a school’s self-evaluation of an instructional program, such as arts and humanities or writing. It has been criticized in Kentucky for schools scoring themselves too high.

Wilson, in presenting some revisions last week to the Senate Education Committee, which approved the legislation, said the bill would increase a student’s readiness after high school graduation and would reduce “bureaucratic burdens on our educators.”

If approved by the full Senate, Senate Bill 1 would be sent to the state House of Representatives.

Brigitte Blom Ramsey, executive director of the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, likes the part of the legislation that would align statewide tests to the academic standards.

“Our state assessments are currently not fully aligned to the standards, which creates confusion and lack of information about what students really know and can do,” she said. “We need to do a better job informing the public about how our students are doing and better assessments will help us do this.”

But Ramsey said members of the Prichard group are concerned about the establishment of a legislative review committee for the standards, ...and “how we as a state handle teacher evaluations, expectations for all students achieving at high levels, and intervening in low-performing schools.”

“We feel these issues need more time and thought before final legislation is passed,” Ramsey said.

The Kentucky Education Association, a school employees group, shares Kentucky Commissioner of Education Stephen Pruitt’s concerns about the timing of the legislation.

“We believe Senate Bill 1 is premature,” said KEA spokesman Charles Main..There are still many unknowns about what flexibility states will be allowed under the new Every Student Succeeds Act.”

This story was originally published February 16, 2016 at 4:34 PM with the headline "Wide-ranging education reform bill could go to Kentucky Senate Wednesday."