Louisville Hosting National Education Conference

Louisville will host a conference next week that focuses on new education standards, which were implemented last year.The common core state standards aim to unify students’ curriculum with future college and career goals. Kentucky was among the first states to adopt the standards and now 45 states have signed on.The commonwealth is hosting the conference because it already has strong relationships between K through 12 education and post-secondary institutions, said Robert King, president of Kentucky’s Department of Post Secondary Education.“People from other states were calling us on a fairly regular basis asking us how to do all these things and so we made a decision, maybe what we ought to do is instead of fielding these phone calls every other day is to do just a big national workshop," King said.The conference sessions will be both for teachers and higher education professionals, which is a key component that helps prepare students for life after high school, he said.“Here in Kentucky we have had these quite remarkable working relationships between the higher education community and K-12," King said.Kentucky has made strides to meet the new standards beginning in 2009 with the passage of Senate Bill 1, he said.The conference will be held at Louisville’s International Convention Center beginning next Monday.There will be 17 states will be represented.