KY Department of Education - Dropout Prevention Resource Guide

Dropout Prevention in Kentucky Schools: Background

House Bill 77 (2000 General Assembly) directs that “no later than December 30, 2000, the Kentucky Department of Education shall establish and implement a comprehensive statewide strategy to provide assistance to local school districts and schools to address the student dropout problem in Kentucky public schools. In the development of the statewide strategy, the department shall engage private and public representatives who have an interest in the discussion. The statewide strategy shall build upon the existing programs and initiatives that have proven successful.”

Also in the 2000 General Assembly, KRS 158.145 was passed that mandated that by 2006:

(a) The statewide annual average school dropout rate will be cut by 50% of what it was in 2000
(b) No school will have an annual dropout rate that exceeds 5%; and
(c) Each county will have 30% fewer adults between the ages of 16 and 24 without a high school diploma or GED than the county had in the year 2000.

These mandates resulted in the KDE Comprehensive Dropout Prevention Strategy: Persistence Toward Graduation December 2000. The strategy included the three mandates of KRS 158.145. It included strategies, a service delivery procedure and future considerations. The underlying premise of the strategy is that all Department staff will embrace student academic success and persistence toward graduation as part of their job description and job purpose.

The Kentucky Department of Education created ten Cross Agency Teams composed of its employees whose purpose was to identify barriers to enable KDE to better assist Kentucky's 176 public school districts reach proficiency by 2014. The Student Engagement Team's Dropout Committee was given the assignment to create a "Toolkit" for Dropout Prevention. The Committee has worked faithfully to develop a product that will have useful pertinent information to aid school districts in their struggles to lower the dropout rates and graduate more students.

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank the Interdisciplinary Human Development Institute, a University Center for Excellence on Disabilities at the University of Kentucky (http://www.ihdi.uky.edu) for their assistance in preparing this information and developing this web site.