The COVID-19 pandemic is a public health emergency that has spread across Kentucky affecting all age groups. Scientific knowledge about this novel virus continues to evolve. The following guidelines are based upon what is known about mitigating risks of transmission across the Commonwealth to protect all populations. Protecting students and staff…

Over the past two decades, most states have adopted laws enabling charter schools, as charter advocates successfully presented charters as the solution to core problems in urban public education. Yet some states with large urban centers, notably Washington and Kentucky, resisted this seemingly inexorable trend for years. What explains their…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) offers state leaders the opportunity to refocus their education systems on improving opportunity and outcomes for young people who have been underserved for far too long. The law includes a number of important requirements to focus on equity in school accountability, but it also leaves many key decisions up to…

Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS)--a strategy to improve families' access to high-quality child care--assess the quality of child care programs, offer incentives and assistance to programs to improve their ratings, and give information to parents about the quality of child care. These systems are operating in a growing number of…

The New York State Senate has given New York City an unprecedented opportunity--to create a Parent Training Center that will build cadres of parent leaders across all five boroughs. The legislation, which places the responsibility for the Center at the City University of New York (CUNY), mandates that the program train and support parents to…

In September 2012, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law Senate Bill 1458, which calls for California's school accountability system to shift from a near-exclusive reliance on state test scores to a broader range of measures demonstrating student achievement. At the high school level, starting in the 2015-16 school year, the Academic Performance…

The University of Kentucky (UK) and University of Michigan (UM) present very different patterns in terms of black student enrollments and completions from 2000 to 2012 because of a structural explanation, a qualitative explanation, and a statistical explanation. Unfortunately, the patterns at the University of Western Ontario (UWO) are partial due…

Introduces a project initiated at Northern Kentucky University to prepare for the establishment of a center in the northern region of the state as a result of a legislative mandate to establish an environmental education center. Involves (n=45) teacher participants in the survey component of needs assessment and identifies priority environmental…

Law-related education is an educational program designed to educate citizens about the law, legal processes, and principles fundamental to a democracy. According to the Center for Prevention of School Violence, school resource officers fulfill essentially three roles in schools: (1) as law enforcement officers, (2) as law-related counselors, and…

As part of its mission to promote the use of accessible education-based information technology in the Southeast Region, the Southeast Disability and Business Technical Assistance Center (DBTAC) is working with colleges, universities, community colleges and K-12 schools to improve access to information technology for students with disabilities in…

Just over a month after the Supreme Court of the United States' ruling in the Seattle and Louisville cases, news analysts and school district officials from Boston to Berkeley, California, from Knoxville, Tennessee, to Evanston, Illinois, are still trying to assess its impact on their student reassignment programs. But the community of scholars…

This document consists of the first five issues of "Notes from the Field," a serial documenting a 5-year study of the implementation of the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) of 1990 in four rural Kentucky school districts. The first issue provides a brief overview of KERA policies and the status of their implementation in the study…

These guidelines provide the framework for implementing the Kentucky law which requires that paraprofessionals employed in the public schools have specific qualifications. The guidelines cover the following topics regarding teachers' aides: (1) definitions and functions; (2) qualifications; (3) policy on unqualified teachers' aides, particularly…

This document provides updates on programs instigated by the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990. Individual sections present information on the following areas of educational improvement in the state: student performance assessment and accountability, early childhood programs, extended school services, primary school, professional development,…

In June 1989, the Kentucky Supreme court ruled the state's elementary and secondary school system unconstitutional. A Task Force on Education Reform provided recommendations to the General Assembly for reforming the educational system which resulted in the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990. This act mandates the creation of a system of public…