School leaders in Jefferson County unveiled the JCPS Journey to Success earlier this year. Submitted photo
Each student has a unique story, based on their different opportunities and experiences, as they transition from kindergarten to senior year. Jefferson County has created an initiative called the Journey to Success to encourage students embark on their journey, where every student’s story is a testament to the power of education.
Terra Greenwell, chief academic officer for Jefferson County, said the playbook is a road map to unlock the potential of every learner in the district and was created to equip students with the tools and knowledge needed for lifelong success.
“This new ‘Journey to Success’ will be the foundation for a soul-encompassing experience that we want all of our students to have,” she said.
The Kentucky Department of Education (KDE), the Center for Innovation in Education (C!E) and the Kentucky Board of Education have partnered to establish three cohorts of Local Laboratories of Learning (L3) involved in the design of a new assessment and accountability system and to pilot any newly created systems.
The L3s have three transformative goals:
- Redefine school success in a reciprocal partnership with communities;
- Create tangible shifts in policy, mindsets and habits throughout the system; and
- Develop new ways of seeing the truth about communities, students and schools.
In 2018, Jefferson County launched its L3 initiative, called the JCPS Backpack of Success Skills. This initiative provided meaningful learning experiences for students, and Greenwell said it’s a valuable tool in showcasing student learning. She said the leadership team created the Journey of Success to update and streamline the system, tools and processes launched in the summer of 2024.
“There are milestones along the way that students will have to achieve and as they achieve these milestones, they will collect these artifacts. These artifacts will go into their backpacks as a demonstration of each milestone,” said Greenwell.
These artifacts are anything the students create, produce and or model that demonstrate they have successfully learned and can implement the success skills needed for the milestone. The playbook guides the districtwide process for measuring each student’s progress and demonstration of success skills at critical transition years (5th, 8th and 12th grades) and interim years.
Dena Dossett, chief of the Accountability, Research and Systems Improvement Division in Jefferson County, said the Journey of Success provides updated expectations and consideration to ensure consistency and maximum impact across all schools. This Journey of Success will be used as a big-picture planning tool and road map to high-quality student learning.
“No matter where the students go, they are going to have the same experience,” said Dossett. “This is the first time that we will have a consistent experience across all of the schools (in the district) with consistent rubrics for what the defenses of learning look like.”
Greenwell said there were a few components that were redefined in this new journey that provide updated expectations reflecting the JCPS Academic Readiness Measures. Those updated components are the defenses of learning rubric, a new digital platform, milestone checkpoints, renewed focus for success, guiding documents and a system for reflection.
“The biggest shift students and administration are going to see is that we are focused on the learner’s journey as opposed to the checkpoints at certain times of the year,” said Greenwell. “We are really focusing on the whole experience. Instead of saying here is my backpack, we are saying here is their learner’s journey, here is how they have become learners and how they can demonstrate their success skills.”
Even though they are implementing this new initiative, Greenwell and Dossett said the success skills did not change.
“These success skills are the foundation of our learning; however, we have created a mind shift in terms of how students experience building those success skills throughout their time here,” said Greenwell.
She added the administration felt this new shift will be more valuable to who students are becoming as learners and that it provides more flexibility and less of a cookie-cutter approach.
“Every kid can demonstrate their learning in different ways, and a standardized test is not necessarily the best way to show their skills,” she said. “The ability to hone in on who the students are and what they have learned and their ability to demonstrate it in multiple ways and with different mediums is essential to showing learning as opposed to just checking off a one-time, one-day temperature gauge. This is much more holistic in the approach and will allow more students to shine.”
Jefferson County hopes this new journey will allow students to share and demonstrate their skills not only in the classroom but around their community as well as being the groundwork for others across the state.
“We are excited to have this much more representative approach of what academic achievement might look like in JCPS, but also, hopefully, this will set up some groundwork for others to follow along,” said Dossett. “I think this also allows us to tell our story of how students are successful and how they can add to their skills and learning to the larger community.”
Jefferson County is just one of 18 school districts involved in the L3 initiative. Schools looking for more information about the L3s, Portrait of a Learner and United We Learn can find resources within the Kentucky Innovation Guide.
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