Kentucky Chamber President and CEO Supports New Tests Despite Lower Scores

Kentucky’s Chamber of Commerce supports the Commonwealth’s new education standards despite a 30%

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Credit KY Chamber

decline in assessment scores released last week. Chamber President and CEO Dave Adkisson says education officials expected lower scores because of more rigorous standards that were established after the legislature passed sweeping education reform in 2009. Adkisson says the scores, while accurate, shouldn’t be scoffed at.

“If parents, teachers, schools, students all say, this doesn’t make us look good let’s go to Frankfort and beat up on our legislators and get them to back off of these new standards…” said Adkisson. “We don’t want that to happen. We’ve put together a network of over 65 CEO’s in this state who will lend their names to a campaign to say “hey let’s stay with this give it some time.”

The Unbridled Learning Accountability model’s results are based on five components: student performance on year-end tests, school achievement gaps, growth in reading and math, college and career readiness, and graduation rates.