Education Commissioner Stephen Pruitt presents Thursday the Kentucky Department of Education’s proposed accountability system in the Glasgow High School auditorium.

GLASGOW – Kentucky Education Commissioner Stephen Pruitt came to Glasgow High School on Thursday to hear feedback from teachers and administrators about the accountability system the Department of Education is working on.

The system for school accountability is being formulated in compliance with the Every Student Succeeds Act, passed in 2015, Pruitt said before the forum.

The system under development is based on input from an earlier series of forums held throughout Kentucky, he said.

“We took the main themes we heard from our town halls last year and started to cultivate that into this whole new system,” he said.

So far, the current round of town hall meetings, which KDE is using to determine how to fine tune the accountability system, has mainly yielded positive comments, Pruitt said.

The dashboard system works like the gauges on a car’s dashboard, with a different gauge dedicated to measuring a school’s outcomes based on proficiency, achievement gap closure, student growth, transition readiness and opportunity and access.

“For the most part, the tone has actually been incredibly positive,” he said. “They like the dashboard, the fact that it’s not about a single number.”

The dashboard system is intended to serve as an indicator of how schools are performing within each of the five standards, Pruitt said.

“It’s a spotlight to highlight the great things that are going on but also a flashlight to expose the things that need to be worked on,” he said.

Thursday’s event was the seventh of 10 planned forums being held throughout the state to gather feedback, according to the KDE website.

KDE will use the feedback to formulate a finalized plan, which is due to the U.S. Department of Education on Sept. 18, Pruitt said.

Pruitt and Rhonda Sims, who oversees KDE’s Office of Assessment and Accountability, took questions.

In response to a question from retired teacher Cesar Torres Jr. about charter schools, Pruitt said the public didn’t need to worry about them. While working for Georgia’s Department of Education, Pruitt was involved in the process of approving charter schools, he said.

“It didn’t kill public schools. It didn’t drain public schools of critical funds and education in Georgia didn’t end,” he said. “What it did do is it gave kids who needed a different kind of education another opportunity.”

Temple Dickinson, the parent of a student at Glasgow Middle School, asked if new social studies standards will include instruction in government and civics.

In response, Pruitt said the social studies standards are being crafted with the inclusion of those subjects in mind.

“When we revise those social studies standards, we are going to make sure that kids are understanding government, they understand civics, they understand economics,” he said.

After the forum, Bo Matthews, Barren County Schools superintendent, said he appreciates KDE’s efforts to streamline the more complicated accountability system and particularly praised the ease of using the dashboard system.

“It lets you see at a glance how you’re doing,” he said.

By being able to easily determine what areas the district might need to improve in, the necessary adjustments can be enacted more quickly and precisely, Matthews said.

“This instrument, I’m confident it will help us work with our students,” he said.

Jimmy Adams, executive director of the Education Professional Standards Board, said he doesn’t see any issues with the system as it has been proposed and likes how the system uses multiple standards to determine how schools are performing.

“It really helps to understand what they know and what they still need to learn,” he said. “I like the direction we’re going in. I think it’s positive for Kentucky.”