Kentucky Department of Education

Literacy is the “foundation upon which academic learning and successful student performance depends” (Meltzer & Ziemba, 2006). Literate students are ones who know how to use reading, writing, listening and viewing, speaking and presenting, and critical thinking skills “to learn content … [to] use those skills to communicate what he or she has learned … [and to] transfer that learning to other situations” (Meltzer & Ziemba, 2006).

Even Start Family Literacy program has ended.  The program provided intensive family literacy services that integrated learning activities for parents and children, helping parents to become active partners in their children's education, and children to achieve a high level of success in school and life.​

Summer Reading Programs at local Kentucky public libraries provide a wonderful opportunity for students to maintain reading skills. This year Kentucky’s public libraries are partnering with the Kentucky Department of Education to provide tools to assist in summer reading selections.

These resources are for the Integrated Strategy pilot districts for use with district leadership and teachers and include information of Literacy & Mathematics Design Collaborative work as well as the Teacher Professional Growth and Effectiveness System.

Kentucky author Frank X Walker has written a collection of poetry, I Dedicate This Ride, in honor of African-American jockey Isaac Murphy. To coincide with the 2010 World Equestrian Games, The University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences, is sponsoring an Isaac Murphy Everybody Reads Project.

In April 2007, the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) invited Kentucky to become part of an Adolescent Literacy Network. Kentucky was one of ten states chosen to become part of this network because of the commitment to adolescent literacy development the state has already shown in its present initiatives and its readiness to take this commitment to a higher level.

The Kentucky Cognitive Literacy Model (KCLM) is a project-based approach to instruction which can be used as a single class intervention for struggling adolescent students or as a school-based model for engaging and meeting the needs of all learners. The model is based on the following four critical components:

As a part of the federal Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy planning grant, the Kentucky Department of Education is developing a state literacy plan. The Kentucky Literacy Partnership was established in 1999 to coordinate Statewide literacy efforts among the public and community entities that share an interest in improving the reading and literacy skills of children and adults throughout Kentucky.

Letters About Literature (LAL) is an annual writing contest for young readers sponsored by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. The Letters About Literature (LAL) writing contest for young readers challenges students to write a personal letter to an author of a fiction or nonfiction book that inspired them. The contest is open to students in grades 4-10.

This list of professional resources is organized into categories—Preschool/Elementary, Middle/High and Other.  It contains descriptions and bibliographies of sources on books about literacy, coaching, best practices and assessments among other topics.

​KET and the Kentucky Department of Education visited a variety of schools in Kentucky and interviewed principals, literacy coaches, curriculum specialists, state educational cooperative literacy consultants and teachers in an effort to capture the type of leadership described in research-based standards.

Literacy PERKS is designed for use by school, district, and state-level reviewers.

The purpose of this guide is to assist schools in establishing a literacy team and to provide guidance as they develop, implement, monitor and sustain their literacy plan.

Read samples from Kentucky schools and districts.

View the latest reports on literacy topics from a variety of national groups and researchers.

The following Literacy Snapshots were created by the Reading First team.

Included in this glossary are definitions of common terms used around literacy instruction. The strategies can be used by teachers in every content area to support literacy instruction. Some of the terms have accompanying word documents with templates and/or examples of the strategy for teacher use.

Literacy PERKS (Program Effectiveness Review for Kentucky Schools) is designed for use by school and district reviewers. At the school level, the best use of Literacy PERKS occurs when Literacy Team members complete the review and use the results to develop a school wide literacy plan.

In response to KRS 158.6451 (Senate Bill 163, 2010), the Kentucky Department of Education has designed professional learning resources to help schools work through the process of building and evaluating a high-impact professional learning plan.

In October 2011, Kentucky was selected by Learning Forward to be the Demonstration State for the nation in “Transforming Professional Learning to Prepare College- and Career-Ready Students: Implementing the Common Core.”

SPEAK is a collaborative conference sponsored by the Kentucky National Forensic League and co-sponsored by the Kentucky High School Speech League, the Kentucky Catholic Forensic League (Louisville diocese), and the Kentucky Educational Speech and Drama Association.

 On this page are resources to support implementation of the KY Core Academic Standards for ELA and the Literacy in the Science, Social Studies/History and Technical Areas Standards.

Kentucky Marker Papers: Phase II
The Kentucky Department of Education has completed an update of Marker Papers development. The Kentucky Marker Papers are instructional samples intended to show competency in writing across the grade levels, subject areas, and categories of writing.