know, Education Matters.

Kentucky's school report card is out.

The Kentucky Department of Education released new standardized test results for the state's public schools.

The results are based on assessments taken in May, Kentucky Education Commissioner Robbie Fletcher, who took over the position in July said the data does not give a straight forward picture.

He spoke recently about the results where there are areas of improvement and concern and what he sees as barriers to student achievement.

>> There's always room for improvement.

And we've taken great strides when it comes to literacy and numeracy.

There was a collaboration among Kentucky Department of Education all along with our legislators to move forward legislation that would improve instruction.

Within our classrooms.

We're thankful for that partnership or thankful for that investment.

Specifically Kde launched the language essentials for teachers of reading and spelling.

The first co are teachers that went through the letters.

Training just finished a 2 year training course in spring of 2024.

So we expect more and more positive results and a positive impact in years to come.

KET is developing a number of statewide support for mathematics and teaching and learning such as the new K a teacher academies that provide professional learning for educators on evidence based practices instruction, construction materials, an assessment, mathematics.

We're also working on new screening and diagnostic mathematics assessments provide reliable guidance on where a child is with their learning.

There are some areas of concern.

First and foremost, we need to see improving our scientists across all grade levels.

We need to take a deep dive into our science assessment, our instruction and or student performance.

With the goal of developing actionable steps to improve science, education and performance with our Kentucky students.

We also want to improve the transition readiness.

I think that's what to me personally as a former high school principal.

I think it's one of most important measures if not the most important measure.

It is a student ready for what's to come.

Once they leave your doors.

We were always going to focus in on graduation rate.

We're not going to shy away from that.

But we also want our students to have that opportunity to see how what they're learning in the classroom is relevant in the real world say as it comes to lower performing schools when it comes to state tasting, there's different factors that contribute to these results.

After all, we've had historic flooding.

Probably not.

We've had tornadoes.

We've had students have been displaced.

We also still trying to deal with and I think we're coming out of having COVID to make this impact is still yet.

We have some lingering effects of COVID for 3.

We're facing teacher shortages.

We're facing chronic absenteeism and again, different reasons.

We're going to have different levels of that chronic absenteeism.

You may find one district that has maybe 62.5% of their students that are chronically absent.

And how can we reach and that they're not in school.

But you may have another district that's just maybe a few miles away.

That only has 5% again, one person's too much.

But again.

Each district has their own story.

The tale.

Each district has unique factors and unique obstacles that they're going to have to go overcome.

There's always going to be a bottom 5% because when you compare other districts, when you look at the bottom 5%, there's always going to be a bottom 5%, regardless of how hot the state test scores are or how low they are.

There's always going to be a bottom 5%.

And then as you move up the categories from read, you have orange, yellow, green and blue.

I'm not looking for comparisons.

What I'm looking for is how can we improve whether you're in the top 10%.

Bottom 5% or anywhere in between.

Our goal here is to help our school systems.

Stay on a path of the continuous improvement.

We understand that.

We want to make sure that our students had Avery, every single student has every single opportunity to perform at their best.

>> Commissioner Fletcher was also asked about test scores for the state's largest school district that Jefferson County and the impact it has on overall test scores for the entire state.

Here was his response.

>> We served 90% of the students across the state with the other 10% were either at home school, private schools.

But we serve 90% of students.

That's 600,000 over 600,000.

So you're looking at several 1010, I'm sorry.

And, you know, somewhere between one-fifth, I'm one of those students.

I located within Jefferson County.

So they're test results.

Make a huge impact on the results across the