Kentucky Education Officials Hope to Participate in NCLB Pilot

Kentucky education officials are working to join a pilot program with No Child Left Behind that will provide more flexibility to schools as they try to reach their goals set by the program. Ten states will be allowed to participate in the pilot program.Under the current plan, schools are classified in levels of meeting or not meeting goals, and state educators have said the method isn’t fair because the classifications are too broad. Lisa Gross with the Kentucky Department of Education says schools that failed to meet one goal were under the same restrictions as schools that failed to meet twelve."This is a response to what we and other states have said, that you can’t expect that every school falls into some kind of cookie-cutter mold. Schools are different, schools are unique, schools need unique help when they are struggling," said Gross.In the pilot program, Gross says educators will have more leeway to assign services like tutoring and reorganization to the schools that need it most. If the Commonwealth is not selected, Gross says they can only hope the pilot program will succeed and be applied to the rest of the country.