Senate Bill 1

Senate Bill 1 is Kentucky's 2009 legislation calling for major changes in academic standards, testing, accountability, teacher preparation, and professional development. 

This is a brief summary of the major elements of the new law.

Standards	Substance: Fewer, deeper, clearer, aligned with college readiness and “success in the global economy. Process: KDE and CPE to organize development of the standards.  Each postsecondary institution to specify skills for entry-level courses. P-12 standards work to include P-12 educators, professors, business leaders, parents, and others. Timetable: mathematics by December 2009, others by December 2010. Partners: Kentucky will partner with large group of states to develop common core standards in mathematics and language arts, and use a matching process for work on state standards for the other subjects.  This work is the kind of project that should qualify for federal stimulus “Race to the Top” funding.
Testing in 2012 and Later Years	Assessment elements to include: Reading, math, science, social studies criterion-referenced tests with constructed-response and multiple-choice items, augmented with norm-referenced. Writing on-demand prompts plus editing and mechanics test. Explore/Plan/ACT readiness tests. End-of-course can replace high school tests (KBE option). Testing to take no more than five of last fourteen days of the year, with scores back to schools within 75 days.
Program Reviews	KBE to set program standards for arts, career/practical, writing programs. Districts to check all schools each year, with KDE checking every other year.
Accountability	New KBE regulation and formula using scores and program reviews.
Educator Implementation	Current P-12 teacher and administrator training on standards, assessing student progress, adjusting instruction (KDE responsibility). Pre-service education programs on same issues (EPSB responsibility). Teacher preparation faculty and staff information and training sessions (EPSB). Postsecondary faculty information sessions regarding the standards (CPE).
Interim Testing and Accountability	Reading, mathematics, science, social studies and on-demand-writing tests continue, along with Explore/Plan/ACT, for 2009, 2010, and 2011. New norm-referenced test for graded 3-7 starts in 2010. NCLB reading and math accountability rules apply to all schools.  For elementary and middle schools, KBE will choose an “other academic indicator,” with scores from other subjects as an option.

Senate Bill 1 can be downloaded here by clicking the link for SB 1.

A PDF version of this summary can be downloaded by clicking here.