CATS – The Nonsense Continues

I was looking over test scores for the Lexington area school system to get ready for Jim Waters’ appearance tomorrow morning on the Leland Conway show when another perfect example of the fouled up nonsense in our CATS assessments leaped off the pages at me.

The story begins with a much better testing program from the people who create the ACT college entrance test. This test, called EXPLORE, is given to all our eighth graders. According to our analysis of the recently released EXPLORE test results for Kentucky, the bottom three middle schools in the Fayette County system with their composite score and rank among Kentucky’s 320 middle schools that reported scores are:


Tates Creek Middle School – EXPLORE Composite of 13.9, Ranking 231

Crawford Middle School – EXPLORE Composite of 13.8, Ranking 245

Leestown Middle School – EXPLORE Composite of 13.1, Ranking 301.


Now, here is the nonsense. According to the new CATS “Media Packet” reports from the Kentucky Department of Education, Tates Creek and Crawford are in trouble in CATS and are in the “Assistance Level.”

But, much weaker performing Leestown got a “get out of jail free card” called a “Progressing” score in CATS. That means Leestown is immune from any sanctions. It also means that Leestown doesn’t get any extra state help to improve, however.

That’s a really smart system – Yeah, Right!!!

As we have said before, when it comes to the results from CATS, Go Figure!!!!