By Joe Ragusa
Kentucky Teacher
Kentucky Board of Education members affirmed their goals and legislative priorities for the 2025-2026 school year during the recent KBE meeting.
The top goal for the board remains to foster vibrant learning experiences, one of the three pillars of the United We Learn vision for Kentucky’s schools. In order to do this, KBE members identified two areas of focus:
• Support educators to design and implement engaging, real-world and content-rich learning experiences that inspire students to participate actively and apply their knowledge meaningfully.
• Strengthen the educator workforce through enhanced collaboration with the Education Professional Standards Board (EPSB) and the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE).
Board members plan to prioritize the recruitment, retention and diversification of the educator workforce to enrich the teaching and learning experience and the educational environment for all students.
The board’s next goal is to advance educational innovation and excellence through continued support of the development and implementation of an accountability system that values innovative teaching practices and vibrant learning experiences, promoting continuous improvement efforts through community-based accountability measures, and advancing statewide efforts to support the implementation of high-quality instructional resources for numeracy and literacy.
As a new focus area, the board intends to explore opportunities for high school transformation across the Commonwealth aligned with workforce development.
KBE members also plan to prioritize collaborative partnerships with various education stakeholder groups – including families, policymakers, community members and groups such as the EPSB – along with the development of metrics to measure how successful the board is in accomplishing its goals and legislative priorities.
The list of 2026 legislative priorities for the KBE includes advocating for legislative backing to promote the reimagined assessment and accountability systems. This includes fostering conversations around innovative approaches to measuring student success and ensuring the systems are meaningful and useful to all learners.
The legislative priorities also include supporting the funding of several key initiatives: professional development associated with the Numeracy Counts Act; Read to Succeed literacy coaches; universal preschool and full-day kindergarten; more support for high-quality instructional resources; funding for the Kentucky Education Technology System; and ongoing support for school safety efforts.
In addition to these funding priorities, KBE members singled out efforts to support the educator workforce in collaboration with the EPSB and CPE to update educator preparation programs, and continued advocacy for teacher scholarships, and additional mentoring to improve the attractiveness of the teaching profession.
See the full report on the board meeting here.