Kids – Pay No Attention to that Educator Behind the Mirror!

Earlier today, I posted a blog about a Position Paper on Assessment from the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE). That paper deals with changing the state’s CATS accountability system.

That first Blog focused on the fact that while the KDE’s news article says the Kentucky Board of Education “released” this paper, in reality the board hasn’t even voted on it, yet.

Now, I’ve had a chance to digest and discuss some of the actual proposal items. It’s clear this paper is mostly a delaying action to keep CATS pretty much as is.

Of course, it’s no secret that the KDE does not want major changes to CATS. The commissioner of education made that quite clear back in August during the introductory meeting of his Assessment and Accountability Task Force.

So, I got a little skeptical as I began reading the new position paper and seeing proposals for what could be some radical changes. Does the KDE really mean it? Would the KDE really have a dramatically new program up and running in two years?

Then, I read this paragraph:


Hmm. Let’s see. We MIGHT get a new math test ready in two years, but forget about any other subjects until at least 2012. The whole thing might not be fixed until a lot later, however, as the department says we could possibly keep our current CATS trend line all the way to 2014 (all two years of that trend line because the department trashed the trend from 1999 to 2006 by inflating the scoring system in 2007).

So, ladies and gentlemen, pay no attention to that educator behind the mirror. He has no intention of doing anything soon – unless the legislature forces him to do so. Kids, that educator seems happy to throw another half-decade of you to the lions of high college remediation rates and high unemployment rates while he saunters along on a change program that probably, in the end, won’t bring much change, anyway.