AN ACT relating to education and declaring an emergency.
     Create a new section of KRS Chapter 158 to define terms relating to assessment and accountability; amend KRS 156.160 to require the state board to identify the common content for the different grades and subjects in the courses of studies and distribute them to schools and school districts; permit each school council to determine the organization of its ungraded primary program, including the extent to which multiage groupings are necessary to implement the critical attributes; exempt all merit schools and sufficient schools designated as improving or maintaining from administrative regulations with certain exceptions; amend KRS 158.6453 to require the state board to establish a system of assessment to be implemented as early as the 1998-99 school year, but no later than the 1999-2000 school year; administer a national norm-referenced test, constructed response items in arts and humanities, and practical living and vocational studies, and 3 on-demand writing pieces to every student enrolled in the final year of the primary program to grade 12; require students identified as exceptional children and youth to be assessed at a grade level determined by the admissions and release committee on the student's individual education program or at grade level if no determination has been made; permit performance on assessments to be used as an indicator in making student promotion decisions; amend KRS 158.6455 to require the Kentucky Board of Education, after consultation with the Office of Education Accountability, to adopt a formula for the accountability index that includes academic, longitudinal, and nonacademic indices; establish the weighting for the indices; establish the categories of merit, sufficient, and substandard with schools placed within each category to be designated as declining, maintaining, or improving; provide consequences for each designation; require that school improvement plans include the proposed actions for improving teaching and learning, related professional development activities, and a timeline; require distinguished educators to provide mandatory state assistance, including evaluating administrators and school councils; require the state board to review the data of all substandard schools after making an adjustment for school efficiency; permit the board to change a school's designation based on the review; eliminate the system of accountability for school districts; amend KRS 158.782 to require distinguished educators to serve in schools subject to mandatory assistance; provide a distinguished educator assigned to a school requiring mandatory state assistance a 30 % salary supplement, except that the distinguished educator may not be paid a daily rate that exceeds that of the highest paid teacher of either the distinguished educator's home district or the assigned district; amend KRS 158.805 to include professional development supporting instructional improvement as a use of Commonwealth School Improvement Funds, permit no more than 1/3 of the fund to be awarded to schools categorized as merit; amend KRS 160.345, 160.350, 605.110, and 156.132 to conform; repeal KRS 157.067 relating to the Kentucky successful schools trust fund; transfer all Kentucky successful trust funds to the Commonwealth School Improvement Funds and provide that these funds shall not lapse; establish procedures for the 1998-2000 biennium based on the results for the 1994-98 accountability cycle to include permitting all schools to apply for Commonwealth School Improvement funds, require all schools failing to reach their improvement goal develop a school improvement plan and all schools categorized as in decline or in crisis to have one or more distinguished educators assigned; EMERGENCY.

     Jan 22-introduced in House
     Jan 23-to Education (H)
     Feb 23-posted in committee