Changes are coming to Kentucky's schools because of House Bill 257, passed by the Kentucky General Assembly and signed by Governor Andy Beshear earlier this year.

This morning, state Education Commissioner Doctor Robby Fletcher explained how the Kentucky Department of Education is changing the way it assesses school districts and shared what he's been hearing from educators all across the state.

Here is more from Kentucky Edition's Clayton Dalton.

One of the main goals that we hear from our our schools all the time is we need to have less testing, less testing.

That feedback was worked into House Bill 257, which removes on demand writing as a state test.

Instead, districts will now adopt their own writing plan.

We want to make sure that students are using their on demand skills, or adding skills to not only communicate what's going on in their English class, but how does that impact maybe a social studies class?

Or what type of writing skills do you need?

Maybe in the science class are you writing lab reports?

Or maybe if you're in a law justice class, how are you looking at a law briefs?

Things of that nature as you move forward.

Fletcher said the way the state assesses progress is also changing.

Under House Bill 257, aligning with feedback they've received from teachers.

92% of the people we surveyed in our very first survey asked that we move from change.

Another, instead of comparing cohorts of students to look at individual student growth, where did you get the child?

Where did you take the child?

For example, if you have a student that comes in, you have teacher aide, has a student that's proficient in reading, and then by the end of the year they're proficient reading.

They acquired the grade level standards and that is growth.

But how much time was invested in a student?

Maybe they came in as an apprentice or maybe even a novice high.

And by the end of the year, they're proficient.

How do we credit that growth?

Because I would argue that a district has invested more time or more, maybe resources into moving that student from that novice level to that proficient level.

So how do we make sure that we we we demonstrate that we want to make sure that schools are are seeing credit for that growth.

Now, again, you also get a score for being proficient, but you also get a score for how much should the student grow.

So there's two different scores there.

And that's a part of the formula.

Overall.

House Bill 257 also allows districts to create local accountability systems, where members of the community give input on how students are being equipped for life after graduation.

But again, we want districts to develop their own.

We want them to ask their leaders.

We want them to ask their government officials.

We want them to ask their parents, their students, their educators to say what's important to our community.

Do we have an agricultural type community that would need more emphasis on how successful students are with Ed, but also to possibly college readiness?

So this wasn't something that was that started with Katie.

This started with our local districts, and we started hearing districts talk about how they're getting more faith from the people in their community.

And students were coming back to the public school system because of the trust, the transparency, the work with the local community to say, we want to meet the needs that you have.

The bill also adds chronic absenteeism as an indicator the state will use to assess school districts.

Students who miss 10% or more of the school year are considered chronically absent.

House Bill 257 goes into effect July 15th.

For Kentucky edition, I'm Clayton Dalton.