Senate approves school accountability changes

(Frankfort, KY) Significant changes to the state's school testing system were approved by the Senate today, sending the bill to the House after lengthy debate and a 22-15 vote.

Senate Bill 1, sponsored by Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville, would replace the state's CATS testing system, which includes both multiple choice and open response questions, with nationally-normed multiple choice tests, including the ACT college entrance exam for high school students. The one exception would be humanities courses such as music and art, where multiple choice exams would be eliminated in favor of more performance-oriented assessment.

"There has been a growing chorus of voices suggesting that our current system, the CATS system, is deeply flawed," said Senate Majority Floor Leader Dan Kelly, R-Springfield. Among the issues he noted was the CATS test's focus on school achievement rather than individual students' performance.

"The current system does not help our teachers diagnostically," Kelly said, quoting Jefferson County Superintendent Sheldon Berman.

Williams said that by not identifying what help students need in K-12 schools, the problem is shifted. "Our children have to be remediated in college. Are we right and everyone else is wrong?" he asked.

Even with college remediation, Senate Majority Caucus Chair Dan Seum, R-Louisville, said that students aren't achieving as highly as they should. "He were are 18 years after KERA was passed, we've spent billions, and we only manage to graduate 12 percent of our kids from college."

Senate senators questioned the sole use of multiple choice exams, particularly the ACT, primarily designed to differentiate students based on their preparation for college coursework. "By mandating the ACT, we're implementing a test that's designed to make sure 50 percent of all students don't do well," said Sen. Tim Shaughnessy, D-Louisville.

Senate Minority Floor Leader Ed Worley said that while he believed the testing system needed to be changed, he didn't believe SB 1 was the proper avenue. "Eliminating CATS will not solve all the problems that are at the heart of what we're dealing with," he said.

By using the new testing program, Kelly said teachers could test students in a handful of days. "If you take the $37 million a day we spend on schools and multiply that by the 30 days we're wasting on the CATS test now, that's more than a billion dollars saved," he said.

Kelly also noted the length of time it takes to grade open response questions, saying that multiple choice questions could be used by themselves to evaluate students' knoweldge. "There's no marginal utility for open response," he said.

SB 1 would also remove writing portfolios from the school assessment program, but would remain as a teaching tool.