This page is maintained by the Strategic Planning and Research (SPR) Team in the Office of the Commissioner at the Kentucky Department of Education. The Strategic Planning and Research Team collects, analyzes, and reports data to develop high-quality research that drives strategic decisions and supports KDE initiatives to make the greatest impact on our children and our future.
Featured Series
The Hidden Burden of Teacher Workload: What We Know and What We Hope to Find Out
Imagine for a moment that you’re on an episode of Family Feud. You’re up on stage in the final round, and the host Steve Harvey asks the following: “Name something that a teacher does.” This one’s easy! They teach. Number one answer. You and your family win the show and get to take a well-deserved [...]
5 of 5: The Attendance Accountability Reality – Same Work, Higher Stakes
For most of us who attended public school, handling an absence was pretty straightforward. If you were out, your parents likely sent you back to school, sometimes with a note, and that was that. Attendance, for the most part, was handled at the school level between families and the attendance clerk. But for many [...]
4 of 5: Beyond the Notice – Finding the Missing Piece Through Family and Community Partnerships
In our last post, we talked about how we have to look outside the walls of our schools themselves to see the real-life responsibilities and daily life disruptions that can keep a student from making it to class. That conversation brings us to an important realization- if we want to turn these numbers around, [...]
3 of 5: Reading Between the Lines – From Surface Level Data to Deep Insights
Previous posts in the series highlight the numbers around the chronic absentee issue facing Kentucky schools across the state. In this post, we consider the story these numbers can’t tell. Identifying who is missing school and how much school they are missing in isolation can create a blind spot. To really understand the story [...]
2 of 5: Expanding State-Level Support: Attendance Recovery in Kentucky
The chronic absenteeism numbers we looked at in our last post were a wake-up call, particularly since these aren’t just numbers on a page, but real students walking into classrooms every day. Our first post made it clear that low-chronic-absenteeism schools have basically disappeared, leaving nearly 80% of the state facing a pretty sobering [...]
1 of 5: Beyond a Definition- The True Scale of Kentucky’s Attendance Crisis
The Kentucky Department of Education's Strategic Planning and Research team is excited to launch the KDE Research Blog—a new online resource dedicated to sharing research, data, and strategic insights on the issues shaping education across the Commonwealth. New articles will be published approximately every two weeks, offering research-based perspectives, practical resources, and data visualizations [...]
How are the Local Education Agencies Spending ESSER funds?
By Tiyani Rodrigo Accessible data The federal government disbursed COVID – 19 relief funds to the SEAs through Coronavirus Aid Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act for the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) Fund (ESSER I), Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations (CRRSA) Act (ESSER II), and American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act [...]
Who has Access to Advanced Placement Courses in Kentucky?
Across the Commonwealth, students have two primary opportunities to graduate high school with college credit: dual credit courses or Advanced Placement (AP) courses. Dual credit courses are offered through a partnership between a postsecondary institution and a high school and allow students to earn high school credit and college credit simultaneously. AP courses are governed [...]