Kentucky Department of Education

Individual Graduation/Learning Plan is a plan of study that emphasizes academic and career development for students beginning in middle school and continues throughout high school.  The plans serves as a tool which helps students set learning goals based on academic and career interests.

Individual Learning Plan

Beginning the 2006-2007 school year, middle and high school students in Kentucky schools have a new online education planning tool at their fingertips. The  new web-enabled  Individual Learning Plan (ILP) will help secondary students (grades 6-12) better focus their coursework on individual goals as they prepare for postsecondary studies and careers.

Schools in the past have had the paper-based Individual Graduation Plan (IGP) for students 8^th gr.- 12^th gr.  The ILP, which contains the same information that students gathered with the IGP, will eventually replace the paper document. KDE strongly recommends use of the web-enabled ILP as it offers more opportunities for schools, teachers, advisors, students and parents to help the students make their secondary educational experience the best it can be.  Some schools may choose to start the year with the paper-based and transfer to the web-enabled tool sometime during the year.  The decision of how to implement the ILP process is a school and/or district choice.

Since the ILP is now web-enabled, it will provide more tools and opportunities for the student than the IGP could in its paper-based form.  It has many features and resources that involve students on a variety of levels:

-Exploring careers beginning in the 6th grade

-Finding careers that match their skills and interests

-Creating education plans

-Establishing personal goals and revisit these as they progress through school

-Creating, maintaining and changing resumes

 -Tracking and reflecting on their community services experiences, work experiences, career-planning activities, and extra-curricular and organization activities

-Exploring colleges and postsecondary opportunities that match their career, postsecondary and life goals

-Connecting to the GoHigherKY.org Web site for help with college planning, tuition assistance information and applications

-Collecting personal information like assessment results, advising activities demographic information and educational history

Research shows that teachers can become better connected with student interests and can provide more individual attention or advice to students when it's needed when there is a process in place to give students individual attention. The ILP will be invaluable to high schools, middle schools and districts as they plan course offerings and staffing to meet the academic and career interests of students.

The ILP will play a key role in the advising component of the students' education. Students will be able to engage in advising and guidance specific to their educational goals based around the ILP. The new tool will allow students to upload documents they feel are representative of their educational experience and level that could be viewed by anyone they wish.

Teachers could use this tool to better know their students. Teachers as advisors will have the opportunity to record advising topics, notes and reflection that should enable more precise advising activities. Teachers can quickly access information that will better inform them about the students' interests and where they need some more attention or advice.

There will be informational sessions at conferences this fall, as well as trainings across the state beginning Sept 5, 2006. The Kentucky Department of Education anticipates that by November 15^th every school will have had an opportunity to have a team trained. That team would then be responsible for training the teachers, staff and personnel in their district to use the ILP.