By Joy Campbell

When Senate Bill 1 was enacted in 2009, it became the framework for Kentucky's education reform movement.

At the heart of the reforms was the requirement to adopt new academic standards in English, math, science, social studies and arts and humanities based on national and international benchmarks. The goal is to raise the bar and challenge students (provide more rigor) and focus the classroom content in grades K-12.

Three standards already are done and delivered to districts.

Kentucky teachers have been implementing the English/language arts and math standards since the spring of 2010. The science standards were adopted in late 2013 and went through the legislative process in the 2014 General Assembly. Teachers have just started implementing them.

Social studies and arts and humanities standards are still under review.

In classrooms today, teachers are moving away from straight lectures and presentation of material and asking students to memorize facts. Much of their teaching now involves showing students how to discover the answers.

"Standards are guideposts along the way that show what students are supposed to be learning," said Jana Beth Francis, director of assessment, research and curriculum development for Daviess County Public Schools. "They are not curriculum."

She gives this English/language arts standards as an example: Students will be able to ask and answer questions about what they read.

"This doesn't tell you what the students read," Francis said. "Standards don't tell you how to teach, and they don't tell you the resources and materials you have to use — which is what we call the curriculum. These are unique. All the goals of the Kentucky Core Academic Standards want the same outcome — to get kids ready for college and career."

The new standards started with what are called anchor college and career readiness standards and "back-tracked" to discover what is needed at each grade level to ensure students are ready for college and career.

These new standards raise the rigor and at the same time focus on essential skills that will lead to lasting understanding, Francis said.

The standards also represent the latest in academic thinking, she said. Before the Internet, information was not readily available to students. Learning for the next 10-15 years will be about thinking and processing and being able to apply what is learned.

Memorizing facts are not as much a part of teaching, she said.

"Facts are important, but you must be able to apply facts and skills to the world around you," she said. "Life occasionally throws us a Final Jeopardy question, but most of the time, you're using your skills. And that is a change in teaching."

Lora Wellman, sixth-grade science teacher at Owensboro Middle School's south campus, said her students are building rockets.

Wellman taught sixth-grade science for two years and high school science for nine years. She also held a district-level position — science digital curriculum developer — for three years. In that role, she worked with science teachers in grades 6-12.

"I'm excited that we're finally on the road to implementation," she said.

Her students are currently in a Project-Based Learning Unit called Speedy Delivery. Her students will build an efficient rocket that can carry mass for a certain distance.

"The purpose of this unit is for students to learn Newton's three laws of motion and why things move," Wellman said.

Students have been doing research and reading and learning about the physics and design and history of rockets. They've built some simple rockets so far, but in the end, they will build more complex ones.

"I give them resources, and they build," Wellman said. "They're using engineering principles and modifying things to be successful. They realize there will be bumps along the way, and that's not negative; they learn from those. The most exciting thing about the standards is student engagement."

Wellman admits that she has always been excited about the standards. "I've always taught this way — that they need to experience it."

She also agrees that changing standards is overwhelming because the content that is taught shifts.

"The biggest challenge, though, is training kids to work this way," she said. They have to take more responsibility and trust themselves, and sometimes that's frustrating.

The new standards had broad input as they were being developed. Just before the mandate of Senate Bill 1, several states already were working to create English/language arts and math standards.

The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers were part of that effort.

In 2009, 100 Kentucky teachers and 40 college professors reviewed those standards for Kentucky and gave feedback to the development of Kentucky's standards, said Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday.

In 2010, the Kentucky Board of Education, the Council on Postsecondary Education and the Education Professional Standards Board jointly met with the governor and the president of the Kentucky House and Senate education committees to officially adopt the Common Core standards, Holliday said.

And 23 states joined together to develop the "Next Generation Science Standards."

Kentucky was among the first to adopt those — in late 2013. Those went through legislative review, and teachers have been using those for about a year.

Social studies and arts and humanities standards are still under review.

Owensboro and Daviess County public schools are finding much to like about the new standards, but they also admit there have been some challenges along the way.

"We're several years into the English/language arts and math standards, and our district is progressing well in the implementation," said Nick Brake, superintendent of Owensboro Public Schools. "Our teachers have embraced these. One of the big misunderstandings of the standards is that they don't tell us what to teach. A standard is not a curriculum. It's a set of guidelines. So teachers still have the latitude to select what they're teaching. There is a considerable amount of academic freedom."

Matthew Constant, chief academic officer for OPS, said English/language arts and math standards have been successfully implemented.

"We've had extensive training about what these standards should look like and how they will play out in the classroom," he said. "We haven't had huge issues, but we have developed different practices."

In the past, teachers gave students the standard, and now, they expect students to think critically and discover the standard.

"What teachers have liked is that it's still up to them as to how to teach," Constant said. "They didn't want to lose ‘the how.' We still need inventive, excited teachers to develop ‘the how.' "

Another plus for OPS regarding these "nearly national" standards is that they allow teachers to better assist students who move in and out of the district.

"We have a lot of transiency, and when those students come to us now, we know where they've been and where they are in their learning," Constant said. "We had more of a learning curve with them before."

When the standards were first discussed, nearly everyone wondered if they would limit or prevent any flexibility for different teaching strategies, he said.

"That is absolutely not the case," he said.

Professional development for teachers has been and will continue to be key in implementing the Kentucky Core Academic Standards, educators in Owensboro and Daviess County said.

DCPS just received a $100,000 Instructional Transformation Grant from the Kentucky Department of Education that will be used primarily to provide more professional learning opportunities for teachers in implementing standards.

"What we've learned from teachers is that we have to change the way we look at curriculum," Francis said. "We can't just rely on what you buy from a vendor."

The grant will help the district to give teachers an opportunity to look at curriculum as it relates to the standards and what that looks like in the classroom, she said.

The biggest concern with the standards, Francis said, is perception, since everybody went to school, and each person's experience was different.

"This change is hard to understand. It's different. Children are applying what they are learning," she said. "It's so different for parents, and there is still the misunderstanding out there that standards are curriculum. Curriculum is still a local decision, and parents should get involved. Change is always challenging."

Both Brake and Constant at OPS have some concerns that Kentucky's assessment system doesn't yet directly follow the new standards.

"There is a mismatch still with our assessment and the new core academic standards," Brake said. "What we're seeing is a lot more authentic teaching and learning. And I think we will see a movement to create a more authentic assessment to catch up."

In the critical thinking taking place, for example, it is not possible to evaluate that in a multiple choice test, Brake said.

KDE is developing more comprehensive writing pieces, Holliday said.

And the new science assessment to match the standards should be ready in 2016-17, he said.

A national movement still exists to strike down the Common Core standards. In Kentucky, a group called Kentuckians Against Common Core is working to that end.

The main national arguments against the standards is that they represent a big federal over-reach and that they are mandatory and not voluntary. Other arguments are that they were adopted without field testing and that the public was only minimally engaged in developing them.

The early reaction in Kentucky to the standards in 2010 and 2011 and on into 2012 was very positive from teachers, parents and the community, Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday said.

"It didn't start getting negative until around 2012 when a campaign was launched to tie the standards to the Obama administration — which had nothing to do with it," Holliday said. "Continuing to this day, teachers, the Kentucky chamber and parent organizations are providing very positive feedback."

The negative comments are coming from some legislators, mainly from northern Kentucky, Holliday said. They're being pushed by tea party members, he said.

To depoliticize the standards as well as increase awareness and gain more feedback, Holliday created the Kentucky Core Academic Standards Challenge on the KDE website.

"We want to give people time to provide feedback, and if we need to make mid-course corrections, we can do that," he said. "So far, we've had over 2,000 folks go on the Web page and provide usable feedback." The department will start work next summer to evaluate the suggestions.

The department will continue to seek public input on the English/language arts and math standards until April 30, 2015. The goal is "to give P-12 teachers, higher education, parents, students and others who are interested the chance to perfect the standards based on their experience over the past four to five years.

"Our teachers are teaching the standards," Holliday said. "We wanted them to go to the website and give us feedback."