Just Not Right

– Boone County High School awards graduation ceremony tickets by CATS scores

Some educators never got it about our old CATS assessment. The scores never had high levels of accuracy for individual students. In fact, the test was never designed to generate highly accurate scores for individual students.

This was all discussed last winter when Senate Bill 1, which dumped CATS, was being developed.

But, some educators never got the message. In a coercive attempt to get kids to do their best on the CATS, the Boone County High School in Northern Kentucky has been awarding limited seats to its graduation ceremonies according to how well individual students scored on the CATS.

Given that CATS can’t provide high accuracy scores for individual students, this practice seems so “not right.” The fact that this nonsense is going on in one of the state’s most upscale school districts shows how education myths and deceptions have penetrated everywhere in Kentucky. It’s disrespectful of students and their parents.

The Boone County High School needs to rethink what it is doing.

And, if this nonsense is going on elsewhere in Kentucky, we’d like to hear about it.