Superintendent's Blog

New Assessment and Senate Bill 1

Welcome to the new Gallatin County School District Web Site!   I believe you will find this web site useful and valuable as you seek information and partner with us to help our children all be successful.

We are experiencing rapid changes in our school district as we work hard to implement Senate Bill 1 – Unbridled Learning.    Our goal is to help every student be college, career, and life ready.  SB1 requires new standards, new state assessments and a new accountability system beginning this school year.  It’s a whole new ball game!   It’s a very exciting and challenging time in Kentucky education. 

With the new assessment which our students will take in the spring of 2012 for the very first time , 100% proficiency is the goal – the old CATS accountability was based on reaching 100 out of 140 (essentially 70%).  Our new goal is 100%.   By the fall of 2012, Standards will be set and cut points will be established for ratings/classifying districts and schools as distinguished, proficient, needs improvement or persistently low performing (the bottom 5%).

We have new common core standards for math and languages arts being implemented across our school district right now.  These standards are more rigorous than any our students have ever seen before.  We hope to see the Kentucky Core Academic Standards for science, social studies, and writing in draft form sometime this school year.

Program Reviews for Arts & Humanities, Practical Living/Vocational Studies, and writing will be performed in all schools this year and will be included in the accountability system through the public reporting of data.  Full accountability for program reviews will begin in the 2011-2012 school year.

Another important piece of Unbridled Learning is the evaluation piece for effective teachers and leaders which is still being developed.  Our district is a pilot site for this process and we are providing feedback and will utilize the new teacher evaluation tools as a field test site.

Our board of education and all of our SBDM councils have been encouraged to set clear and high expectations (truly believe that more is possible for OUR students and establish a clear focus for improvement, Create the conditions for success (Demonstrate commitment to improvements through board discussion and action and SBDM council discussion and action and align all parts of the system and each school around the students’ learning needs), Hold the system and each school accountable (Determine indicators –evidence- of progress and success and routinely monitor, receive reports and ask questions), and Learn as a board team and as a SBDM council team (Establish time to learn together as a board/superintendent team and a principal/SBDM council team.  Talk about what is most important – engage in policy development to sustain improvements for all students).

 Our board of education has made a commitment to College and Career Readiness.

The undersigned, on behalf of the Gallatin County Public Schools, pledge to increase the rate of college and career readiness of the graduates in our school district form 21% in 2010 to 61% in 2015.  To meet this goal 71 students in the 2010-2011 eight grade class will need to be college and career ready, 54 more students than were college and career ready in the graduating class of 2010.

For our students to be considered college and career ready, they must meet the benchmarks on all areas of the EXPLORE (8^th Grade), PLAN (10^th Grade), and ACT (11^th Grade).  See benchmark scores below.

Our high school students also have End of Course Assessments in Algebra II, English II, Biology, and U.S. History which will count up to 20% of their final grade.  These tests are more rigorous than any our students have ever seen before and may determine if a student graduates or not.

The important thing to remember is that everything is changing and that our 2012 spring assessment results may take a dip this first year.   This does not mean our teachers and administrators are not working hard or that our students are not as smart.  It simply means the game has changed.  No longer will we be measured on a 0-140 scale.  We will be measured on a scale of 0-100.  The standards are higher and more rigorous and there will be a growth curve as we adjust to everything that is happening.  We must make the culture shift from where our school and community are to a “college going” culture.  Together, our schools, our parents, our students, and our community, we can do this!