Community Conversations: Early Childhood

The 2025 legislative session came at a time when Kentuckians are not only demanding more from our education systems—they’re rethinking how those systems should work in the first place. The latest Big Bold Future National Rankings report confirms the stakes: Kentucky ranks 47th in preschool enrollment, 46th in postsecondary enrollment, and 44th in degree attainment. But across the state, communities aren’t waiting. Through FAFSA campaigns, early learning collaboratives, and new models for dual credit, tutoring, and diploma redesign, local leaders are building the future from the ground up. This session offered new tools to support that momentum—but real change will come from how we reimagine, re-center, and rebuild systems in partnership with the people they’re meant to serve.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE 2025 SESSION

• HB 190: Automatic Enrollment in Advanced Coursework
  Ensures qualified students are enrolled into advanced courses starting in grade 4, reducing gatekeeping and increasing access based on demonstrated mastery.

• HB 193: Dual Credit Scholarship Expansion
  Removes grade-level restrictions on scholarships, allowing more students—especially in earlier grades—to access college-level coursework with financial support.

• HB 208: Cell Phone Policy in Schools
  Directs local school boards to implement prohibitions on student use of personal devices during the instructional day, balancing local control with statewide expectations.

• HB 240: Kindergarten Readiness and Retention
  Requires schools to give end-of-year reading assessments to all kindergarten and first-grade students, and to hold back students who do not meet reading goals for their grade level.

• HB 241: Virtual Learning Programs
  Ensures school districts can maintain funding during disasters by allowing them to make up instructional hours and waiving up to five days and also sets clear standards for virtual learning to maintain educational quality in any setting.

• HB 298: School Turnaround Flexibility
  Provides greater local flexibility in designing evidence-based improvement strategies for Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) schools.

• HB 342: Financial Literacy Graduation Requirement
  Requires all high school students to complete a one credit course aligning academic experiences with essential life and workforce skills.

• SB 68: Learning Capacities Modernization
  Updates definitions and expectations around learning capacities in schools, focused on workforce readiness and essential durable skills like critical thinking and problem solving.  

• SB 207: Schools of Innovation and Instructional Materials
  Allows approved "Schools of Innovation" to access regulatory waivers to enhance student achievement and operations and establishes two new entities to support districts in selecting high-quality instructional materials.

These policies, if implemented well, can support the local momentum we are already seeing in place-based work across Kentucky. But policy alone is not enough. We must invest in the infrastructure, advising, data, and partnerships that turn policy into impact.

Even as momentum built around student opportunity and system innovation, one bill introduced significant questions about how we support access and student success in higher education. House Bill 4 limits how public colleges and universities in Kentucky can design programs or offer services that focus on identity or background. It prohibits institutions from funding or requiring certain trainings, offices, or programs—even those that have helped students feel seen, supported, and ready to succeed. While the bill aims to promote a range of viewpoints, it introduces new uncertainty that could impact how campuses support students.  

Because the language is broad, colleges may interpret the new law in different ways—some may continue offering broadly accessible supports and services, while others may limit programs out of caution. These varied responses could leave students unsure about the supports they can count on.

Even with these changes, the need for student support has not gone away. Community organizations will become increasingly important in helping students navigate college, stay on track, and reach their goals. It will be important to track the impact this has on already stagnant college going rates in Kentucky, particularly since an estimated 75% of good jobs will require some form of postsecondary training by the year 2040. To ensure all students continue to have a fair shot, colleges and partners must prioritize transparency—reporting on how policies affect access, persistence, and success—especially for those student groups already facing persistent achievement gap—and adjusting when needed.

THE PATH AHEAD

As the dust settles on the 2025 session, the Prichard Committee’s focus is squarely on turning policy into progress—through clear implementation, local engagement, and ongoing accountability. We are committed to a path forward built around:

• Empowering communities to lead improvement.
  Through community profiles and place-based strategies, we are working alongside Kentuckians to design local solutions to challenges in early learning, school climate, and student transitions. Across the state, we see the power of strong partnerships—between schools, families, and local organizations—to remove barriers, expand opportunity, and drive sustainable change.

• Expanding access to advanced coursework and postsecondary pathways.
  With HB 190 and HB 193 now law, our next steps include supporting districts to implement automatic enrollment fairly across the board, strengthen advising, and expand course availability—especially in under-resourced areas. We’ll continue working with partners to ensure students don’t just access advanced courses but thrive in them.

• Lifting up meaningful diplomas and transition readiness.
  We’re working with employers, educators, and families to define what a high school diploma should signify in today’s economy—and to ensure all students leave high school ready for college, career, and community life. That means strengthening advising, boosting dual credit success, and ensuring durable skills are embedded in core instruction.

• Building better early childhood systems through family voice and workforce focus.
  We are supporting communities in aligning early childhood programs with family needs and economic realities, including quality improvement strategies and support for providers. With Kentucky ranked 47th in preschool enrollment, this remains one of the most urgent investments the state must make.  

• Improving data transparency and shared accountability.
  We continue our call for strong public access to education data so communities can understand what’s happening and act on it. That includes data on school performance, course access, early learning participation, and postsecondary outcomes—broken down by region, race, and economic status.

• Rebuilding trust in public education through consistent community engagement.
  We’ll continue to mobilize families, students, and educators to take part in local school decisions, improvement planning, and accountability conversations—with a growing emphasis on student efficacy, so young people see themselves as capable agents in their own learning and success. As the Big Bold Future report states, “transparency, accountability, and community participation” must be foundational to every effort.

The policies passed this session set the stage—but they won’t deliver results on their own. The challenge now is to turn opportunity into impact. That means local partnerships must move from intention to action. Schools can’t do it alone. Community organizations, nonprofits, and families have a critical role to play in making sure students are supported, systems are responsive, and progress is real. This is the moment calls for community-building as implementation—because lasting change grows from relationships, trust, and shared responsibility.  

Kentucky’s future will be shaped by what we choose to do next, together.

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March 28, 2025

Contact: Lisa McKinney, Communications Director, The Prichard Committee

(cell) 859-475-7202

lisa@prichardcommittee.org

Statement on the 2025 Kentucky Legislative Session from Brigitte Blom, the Prichard Committee

LEXINGTON, Ky — The 2025 General Assembly brought forward a series of education bills—some narrow in scope, others more sweeping—but together, they represent real shifts in how Kentucky supports students and schools. While no single measure defined the session, the cumulative effect is significant. Taken together, these policies signal new expectations for schools and postsecondary institutions—and new responsibilities for the communities that support them.

House Bill 190 is a powerful step forward in expanding opportunity and excellence in Kentucky high schools. The bill requires school districts to adopt plans to automatically enroll students who meet established benchmarks into advanced coursework such as Advanced Placement, dual credit, and other college-level classes. This is a needed step to ensure that readiness—not bias or barriers—determines access to challenging academic opportunities. When students are encouraged to take rigorous courses and supported to succeed, they are more likely to graduate prepared for college, career, and life.

House Bill 208 takes a proactive step to support student learning, focus, and well-being in Kentucky schools. The bill requires school districts to adopt policies prohibiting personal cell phone use during the school day—except for emergencies and instructional purposes—while also strengthening safeguards against harmful online content. By minimizing classroom distractions, the bill helps students stay engaged, build stronger peer relationships, and develop healthy digital habits.

House Bill 4 limits how public colleges and universities in Kentucky can design or fund programs for historically underrepresented students. With Kentucky ranking 46th in postsecondary enrollment and 44th in degree attainment—and wide gaps in outcomes by race and ethnicity—the state must closely monitor how these changes affect access, support, and completion. Today, 61% of Asian or Pacific Islander and 36% of white Kentuckians aged 25–64 hold an associate degree or higher, compared to just 29% of Black and 27% of Hispanic or Latino Kentuckians. As institutions adjust, local communities and nonprofits will play an increasingly important role in ensuring all students have the support they need to enroll, persist, and succeed.

The 2025 Big Bold Future National Rankings Report makes clear where Kentucky must focus its efforts—from early childhood to postsecondary access and degree attainment. It shows us not just where we stand, but where we need to go. Kentucky’s future will be shaped not only by what happens in Frankfort, but by the everyday decisions made in classrooms and communities across the Commonwealth. The Prichard Committee stands ready to support community members, state leaders, families, and schools in coming together for the common good of Kentucky’s students and the future of our Commonwealth.

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The Prichard Committee believes in the power and promise of public education –early childhood through college– to ensure Kentuckians’ economic and social well-being. We are a citizen-led, non-partisan, solutions-focused nonprofit, established in 1983 with a singular mission of realizing a path to a larger life for Kentuckians with education at the core.

By: Jonathan Plucker and Brenda Berg

The Kentucky General Assembly is currently considering a bill that would require school districts to establish policies for automatic enrollment in the Commonwealth’s public schools. Introduced by Rep. Robert Duvall and co-sponsored by Rep. Vanessa Grossl, HB 190 passed the House unanimously and can be considered by the Senate in the session’s final two legislative days on March 27  & 28.      

Automatic enrollment is one of the most intriguing educational innovations in recent years. Also known as auto-, mandatory, or opt-out enrollment, the concept is simple: Students who perform at advanced levels in their classes oron state tests are automatically enrolled in advanced courses for the following academic year.

This commonsense reform is based on the observation that many high-performing students are not receiving advanced learning opportunities, even when there is clear evidence that they are ready to advance academically. This is especially true for low-income and rural students, who have much less access to rigorous advanced opportunities, ranging from gifted education to accelerated coursework to AP courses. Recent research demonstrates there are many such students, leading to a chronic under challenging of many of our brightest children. As a result, these students are less likely to be ready for today’s workforce or post-secondary education.

As a case in point, Western Kentucky University and Johns Hopkins University recently collaborated on Project Launch Plus. This initiative identified talented students in low-income, rural communities in Kentucky and North Carolina and provided them with advanced education. Although we anticipated finding many eligible students, the sheer number exceeded our expectations. There is tremendous talent in every single one of Kentucky’s schools, but many of these students do not have the necessary opportunities to develop those talents fully. The provisions in HB 190 will help provide those opportunities.

We encourage Senate Leadership to bring final passage to House Bill 190 so that Kentucky students can begin benefiting from its provisions.

Concerns about automatic enrollment tend to focus on cost and implementation. Regarding cost, we point to North Carolina’s experience, which began with passage of its auto-enrollment law for mathematics in 2018. The state education agency and districts now have years of experience with implementation and have seen impacts well beyond expectations by elevating the overall importance of advanced coursework opportunities. Cost proved not to be an issue: In the end, the same number of teachers educates the same number of students, leading to no additional financial burden on the state or school districts.

Implementation was challenging in some districts but can be overcome. For example, due to teacher inexperience with advanced coursework and small numbers of identified students, some districts used a range of non-traditional staffing options to promote access, including staff-sharing, transporting students, and online courses to ensure that all eligible students are able to access challenging coursework. In other cases, it was simply not on their radar that they weren’t offering advanced courses commensurate with other districts, and they could just reassign existing staff to, for example, teach algebra instead of the standard 8^th grade course.

Despite these implementation challenges, North Carolina’s experience is a major policy success, with thousands of additional students enrolling in advanced math courses each year. An important key to the state’s success is that auto-enrollment begins in elementary school, before students get lost in the transitions to middle and high school. The effects appear to be most significant with middle school students and those from traditionally underserved backgrounds, such as the rural and low-income students noted above. Similar success in Kentucky would transform the STEM pipeline in the Commonwealth.

If passed and signed into law, House Bill 190 allows the Kentucky Board of Education to create regulations to administer the new provisions. We strongly encourage the Board to require the Kentucky Department of Education to (1) collect districts’ advanced education plans to promote public access to the information and (2) issue an annual report summarizing the impact of auto-enrollment, including district level reports of the number and percentage of eligible students served. Annual reports in North Carolina have been invaluable data sources for tracking the impact of the law.

HB 190 is bold, innovative, and highly likely to be effective. It will provide a strong foundation for efforts to help Kentucky’s students excel in the classroom and eventually in the workforce.

Jonathan Plucker is a professor at Johns Hopkins University and a past-president of the National Association for Gifted Children. Brenda Berg is President & CEO of BEST NC (Business for Educational Success and Transformation in North Carolina).

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