No Title 2970
Supplement to “Understanding Individual Learning Plans”
On March 26, 2009, Gov. Steve Beshear signed Senate Bill 1 into law. This legislation included a mandate for the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE), the Kentucky Board of Education (KBE), and the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) to develop a unified strategy to reduce college remediation rates of recent high school graduates by at least 50 percent by 2014 from the rates in 2010, and to increase the college completion rates of students enrolled in one or more remedial classes by three percent annually from 2009 to 2014.
CPE and KDE have partnered to develop a unified strategic plan developed by cross agency statewide work groups. The activities of these groups will be ongoing and represent a model of collaboration with a shared vision of having all students prepared for postsecondary and career success. Because of this work, the goal is for more students to reach higher levels of proficiency and more students to be college and career ready.
From this collaboration the Kentucky Department of Education introduced the Unbridled Learning: College/Career Readiness for All, an initiative designed to ensure every student is prepared for college and/or career by the time he or she graduates from high school.
This work is being carried out through seven key strategies:
1. Persistence to Graduation: includes a tool that allows schools to identify students who are most likely to drop out of school.
2. Course and Assessment Alignment: includes the new Kentucky common core standards and the professional development to schools and teachers to help them implement the new standards effectively in the classroom.
3. Unbridled Learning Accountability Model: includes the new accountability formula that schools and districts will be measured by.
4. Targeted Interventions: refers to the transitional intervention regulations that require any student who does not meet college readiness benchmarks (on EXPLORE, PLAN, or ACT) to have interventions to help them achieve benchmarks before they graduate so that they can subsequently go to college without having to take remedial or developmental classes.
5. Career Readiness Pathways: includes the National Academy Foundation work of aligning high school coursework to students’ preferred career options after high school.
6. Acceleration: includes programs and opportunities for children who would benefit from a less traditional, or more challenging, academic experience in high school. This component includes Advance Placement, Early College, and advanced learning opportunities.
7. Academic and Career Advising: includes support for schools to develop or enhance a comprehensive college and career advising program for all students in grades 6-12. Advising programs should be framed around the ILP and guide students to take courses and engage in co-curricular activities that will be prepare them to meet their personal goals for life after high school.
The activities of the work teams will be ongoing and represent a model of collaboration with a shared vision of having all students prepared for postsecondary and career success.
To read the Kentucky Living September 2012 feature that goes along with this supplement, go to Understanding Individual Learning Plans.
