LEXINGTON, Ky. - The University of Kentucky is partnering with two non-profit foundations to establish the National Center for Innovation in Education. With a focus on college and career readiness, the center will assist states in implementing the Common Core standards and helping students learn on a deeper level.
Other priorities for the center:
“Going to performance or mastery-based learning, developing an individualized learning program for every one of the students, beginning to think about how we provide better supports around students who need those supports, and putting technology at the center of the learning process,” says Executive Director Gene Wilhoit.
Wilhoit most recently led the Council of Chief State School Officers and is a former Kentucky education commissioner.
So far ten states across the country (including Kentucky) have agreed to work on enhancing student learning.
“Our job is to sort of bring a focus to those areas that need improvement, help them resolve them but not tell them how to do them, give those over to the local school districts and to the states for them to wrestle with, for us to be the locus for those conversations.”
No state money is going toward the National Center for Innovation in Education, which will be housed at UK's Coldstream Research Campus. The center is funded through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
