Kentucky schools would be rated from one to five stars under a proposed accountability system that scraps single summative scores in favor of a system that rewards schools’ efforts to narrow performance disparities between students, among other success indicators.

The Kentucky Board of Education last week discussed the new system, which has been under development for more than a year with feedback from thousands of Kentucky educators and the public.

Gary Houchens, a member of the state board and an associate professor at Western Kentucky University, said he favors the more nuanced system rather than a single score for schools.

“It caused schools and a lot of the people in the public to be overly focused on how schools were doing compared to one another,” Houchens said, also stressing that the approach doesn’t fully capture a school’s efforts to improve. “It can’t convey all the different layers of activity within a school.”

Under the proposed system, schools would earn recognition for proficiency, growth, college and career preparation, narrowing performance disparities between student populations and promoting equal student access to content, programs, skilled educators and educational opportunities that lead to success.

School districts and charter schools will work to create a local measure emphasizing an improvement area or charter school objective, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.

For Houchens, favoring a single score doesn’t fully capture a school. A school could be rated distinguished, yet have wide performance disparities between students of color, English learner students or other disadvantaged student groups.

Narrowing achievement gaps is heavily emphasized under the proposed system.

“A school with big achievement gap problems will not be able to be in those top two levels,” Houchens said.

Following the board’s discussion of the plan during its meeting Wednesday, the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence released a statement.

“We are encouraged by the level of discourse regarding urgency in student achievement at today’s state Board of Education meeting,” Prichard Committee Executive Director Brigitte Blom Ramsey said. “Much work is left to be done to integrate the conversation into a final plan, but it is doable with this level of board commitment.”

The state board will finalize the accountability plan in August.