Model Laboratory School at EKU reaches a landmark anniversary, setting the course for future generations of young learners and educators.
Model Laboratory School and Eastern Kentucky University (EKU) are celebrating 120 years of preparing students and educators through hands-on, experiential learning. In 1906, Eastern Kentucky State Normal School, later Eastern Kentucky University, was established primarily to train educators. Model Lab, a P-12 teaching lab on EKU’s campus, opened that same year as Kentucky’s first laboratory school. It remains Kentucky’s only laboratory school and one of about 50 operating in the United States.
“For 120 years, Model Laboratory School and Eastern Kentucky University have grown together with a shared commitment to learning, innovation and preparing students for the future,” said EKU President David McFaddin. “From EKU’s beginnings as a normal school focused on preparing educators to Model’s role as a living laboratory for teaching and learning, this partnership has had a lasting impact on generations of students, educators and families. We are proud to celebrate this legacy and look ahead to the next 120 years.”
Laboratory schools grew in popularity across the country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, following the model established by educator and reformer John Dewey at the University of Chicago. These schools gave educators, researchers and university students opportunities to collaborate through immersive learning and educational research. At EKU, the laboratory school was and continues to be an essential partnership for equipping future teachers with hands-on experience.
“Normal schools were places where you could learn to be a teacher, and lab schools allowed students to watch master teachers work with their students and to see what it looked like to be a good teacher, to have a gradual release into teaching themselves. And so Dewey created a learning living laboratory where people could watch master teachers, learn how to do it themselves and then take it out to their schools,” said Dr. Elizabeth Smith, dean of the College of Education and Applied Human Sciences.
At their height, laboratory schools operated in several areas of the Commonwealth, including the University of Kentucky, Western Kentucky University and Morehead State University. However, they became less common as the public school system grew in the 1960s, and financial challenges emerged without a dedicated tax base.
Smith and Dr. John Williamson, superintendent and dean of Model Laboratory School, believe Model’s connection to EKU and its history as a teaching institution helped it endure. Williamson also attributes the school’s longevity to its success in providing students with an academically rigorous, hands-on educational experience designed to build mastery of real-world skills.
“When you walk through the halls of Model, whether you’re walking into a pre-K literacy center or a classroom of seniors defending their original research, what you’re going to find is students creating things — a business plan, a working prototype, a culinary dish, an investigative podcast episode. They’re performing, they’re rehearsing, they’re designing. They’re using calculations and equations to apply them to something real,” said Williamson.
“It’s just a really mutually beneficial, reciprocal, symbiotic relationship that allows us to provide an excellent P-12 education while preparing the next generation of effective teachers,” Smith said.
Today, EKU’s School of Education is expanding its collaboration with Model. Undergraduate education students are now taking courses on-site in Model’s classrooms much earlier in their academic careers. Those students learn about a concept or a practice in a classroom at Model, and then go into the K-12 classrooms to interview faculty, observe the concept in action and debrief together.
“What we found is that when education students are taking courses on-site at Model, they have way more opportunities to see good teaching in action,” Smith said.
The College Board named Model to its AP® School Honor Roll in 2025 at the program’s highest level. Model has received the honor three consecutive times since the Honor Roll launched in 2023. The designation recognizes Model among the top 8% of qualifying schools in the United States and Canada and the top 6% in Kentucky. Model High School also ranked among Kentucky’s top five high schools in 2021-22 and 2022-23 and was named a Five Star School by the Kentucky Department of Education in 2019.
In 2020, the Kentucky State Legislature recognized Model’s critical role in education by codifying its operation into law under House Bill 366 (now KRS 164.380), making it Kentucky’s only legislatively designated laboratory school.
In May 2025, EKU and Model leaders broke ground on a new facility that will carry the school’s legacy into the future. Kentucky lawmakers budgeted $149 million for the project, which is on track to open in August 2028.
“Beyond serving our PreK-12 student body, the new facility will feature a built-in professional learning center — for both in-service educators, and for the future teachers, nurses, therapists, psychologists, and school safety professionals who will do hands-on clinical and research work alongside our students,” Williamson said.
Model Laboratory School serves about 750 total students from PreK-12 who come from eight different counties across Central Kentucky.
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By Bode Brooks, EKU | September 23, 2026