Kentucky State of Education press conference

Stephen Pruitt

Kentucky’s new commissioner of education, Stephen Pruitt, held perhaps his first major event since taking office three months ago with today’s press conference on the state of education in Kentucky.

Pruitt talked for an hour about a wide range of material, and it will take some time for me to cover that due to the sheer volume of information, but a few good comments made at the conference are worth an immediate acknowledgement.

One very significant announcement is that Kentucky is moving away from Common Core and two major changes Pruitt wants to add higher level high school math courses (he mentioned calculus) and he also wants to add cursive writing to correct two obvious Common Core problems. The Bluegrass Institute has been a strong and constant critic regarding the absence of higher level high school math in Common Core, so this announcement was particularly welcome.

Another comment was that the highly contentious attempt to revise Kentucky’s social studies standards has gone on the back burner for now. Pruitt came in well after this mess began, and he clearly has heard enough already to decide that the effort needs a lot of thought and redirection. Again, this is very welcome news at BIPPS.

In response to a reporter’s question, Pruitt also indicated more support for charter schools than his predecessor had demonstrated. Pruitt was also asked about the currently submitted Senate Bill 1, which will have notable impacts on education if enacted. In a rather refreshing response, Pruitt made it clear he is not interested in publicly challenging legislators in their area of responsibility for policy decisions and declined to comment on the bill.

To be sure, some of the other things discussed at today’s press conference and included in Pruitt’s “The State of K-12 Education in the Commonwealth of Kentucky” report are more controversial, but I’ll save discussion of that for later. For now, just understand that there is a lot more to the story about testing and other matters beyond what the Commissioner Pruitt covered today.

However, there were some very good moves announced today, and that is encouraging.