In an interesting surprise, the Kentucky Department of Education has started yet another public comment period on revisions to the state’s education standards for math and English language arts (reading and writing). This new comment period is announced in NEWS RELEASE No. 17-173, which currently is only available to e-mail subscribers but shortly should appear here. The department indicates the need for a new comment period was triggered by concerns regarding the format of the earlier comment period (a format I criticized as biased at the time).Now, the department says:

“To ensure transition-readiness for all for all students, KDE is seeking further public input regarding the cumulative grade-to-grade progression of K-12 ELA standards at the elementary, middle and high school levels and the cumulative math standards as they are organized by domains, which are larger groups of related standards.”

But, is the new survey format any better than the one from the earlier survey I criticized back in May?

Here is more from the News Release: To provide feedback on the Kentucky Academic Standards for English/Language Arts, please use the following link:

https://www.research.net/r/KDEELA.

To provide feedback on the Kentucky Academic Standards for Mathematics, please use the following link: https://www.research.net/r/KDEMath.

Due to the amount of text within the survey, it is recommended that surveys be completed on a full-size computer or laptop screen.

Questions on this process can be directed to standards@education.ky.gov.

The new comment period runs through Thursday, Jan. 11, 2018.It is important to keep in mind that the state is still basically still using cut-and-paste adoptions of the Common Core State Standards for these two subjects. It is possible that the current standards will survive basically unchanged if there isn’t a strong public call to do something different (and better).However, the new survey format shares some major shortcomings with the earlier survey that started back in May 2017. The format makes it awkward and impractical to discuss some really major problems such as the failure throughout the current standards to include performance metrics for each standard. Absent such performance standards, academic standards statements remain excessively vague.

Thus, I am not going to spend time posting essentially the same general comment over and over again for each individual standard. So, I will be doing another letter.

You can try the new survey approach, but I think you will find it still tends to channel comments in a way that will mostly preserve the current Common Core-based standards. Largely keeping the current standards just isn’t going to work for reasons I explained back in October.

I don’t think much has changed, so my new letter is probably going to look a lot like the letter I wrote in September.

In any event, if you also decide to write a letter, here is some useful information:

Mailing address for Commissioner of Education and Kentucky Board of Education:

Kentucky Department of Education

300 Sower Boulevard

Frankfort, KY 40601.

E-Mail for Commissioner Pruittstephen.pruitt@education.ky.gov

Contact information for state board members can be found here.

By the way, if you do write to these folks, we would appreciate getting a copy of your letter, as well.