CATS – Later Than Ever?

Blame this one on the weather – at least in part – but a bill just out of the Kentucky House to allow schools to delete up to 10 days from this school term is now headed towards the Kentucky Senate.

It looks like a proposal to delay the CATS testing commensurately may be added to the legislation. That will delay the return of scores to schools to the point of ridiculousness.

In fact, Sen. Joey Pendleton, D-Hopkinsville, says he would favor either a CATS delay or even dropping the assessment all together for this year.

Of course, because portions of CATS are required for NCLB, the feds would have to buy off on that. But, dropping the non-NCLB parts of the assessment would free up a lot of days for more instruction – instruction that otherwise will be lost due to the winter storms.

There might even be some cost-savings.

So Senator Pendleton’s radical-sounding idea actually might make sense.

Best guess: Our legislators will basically say the heck with instruction and go for testing as usual, anyway. That will probably mean scores won’t come back before October, at the earliest, far too late for schools to get much of value from them.

It sure might make sense to cancel all the non-NCLB stuff in CATS so our kids could recover at least some of the lost academics. And, since we were declared a federal disaster area, maybe the feds would give us some slack on the NCLB stuff, as well. It never hurts to ask.