How Much Does the CATS Assessment Really Cost???!!!

-- And What Do We Get From It?

During today’s presentation of Senate Bill 1 to the Kentucky Senate Education Committee, some really interesting comments popped up.

At one point, Senator Dan Kelly outlined the full costs of CATS public school assessments, including the opportunity costs of instructional days lost to both administer the tests and conduct all the overly focused test preparation that we hear about so often. Kelly’s bottom line cost for CATS -- $700 Million.

We’d need to grow an awful lot more tobacco to recover anything like that with the ill-advised tax increases Frankfort is discussing!

It would be far better to finally reign in this out of control assessment, which, as Senator Ken Winters pointed out in the meeting, does not even provide us with scores that are valid and reliable for individual students.

The combination of high costs and limited education data just about insures the CATS has to be about the most inefficient school assessment program anywhere in the United States.