Resources Explain Assessment/Accountability Model

Lisa Gross, Kentucky Department of Education

FRANKFORT, KY (4/17/12) – The Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) has developed resources to help explain the state’s new assessment and accountability model for public schools.

KDE has dedicated a page on its website to the Unbridled Learning: College/Career Readiness for All model, which was developed in response to the mandates of 2009’s Senate Bill 1. The page is accessible by clicking the Unbridled Learning icon on the KDE homepage or by Clicking Here.

Items posted on the page include two brochures – one on assessment, another on accountability – aimed at parents, but also intended for a general audience. Those brochures are posted near the bottom of the page, in two formats (a printable brochure layout and a text version).

Another posted item called Unbridled Learning Summary provides a graphic representation of the way the new accountability model will impact schools and districts.

Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday explains the new accountability model in a videotaped presentation, also now available. The presentation may be accessed at by Clicking Here.

The Unbridled Learning accountability model will be applied for the first time to test scores and other data from the current school year. This month, public school students begin taking the new Kentucky Performance Rating for Educational Progress (K-PREP) tests in reading, mathematics, science, social studies and writing. Students also have participated in end-of-course assessments in specific subjects at the high school level. Scores from these tests, along with data on closing achievement gaps, student academic growth, graduation rates and college/career readiness, will be used to determine school and district accountability designations.

Those designations will be announced in the fall. In February 2012, the U.S. Department of Education approved Kentucky’s application to use the Unbridled Learning model to provide both state and federal accountability designations for public schools and districts. In Kentucky, these designations will replace the two-tiered accountability system that was in place since the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in 2001.