Gentlemen, start your search engines
The boys over at the Bluegrass Institute are apparently ferreting out Commish finalists...or are they semi-finalists...or, do they just want the job?
Hard to tell what's what with this board, but KBE has called a meeting for Sunday when we are supposed to learn who the real finalists are. Then, there's a (way too brief) two-week period for public input - or, if it's anything like last time - perhaps it should be called the discovery period.
Let's hope they don't name their finalists and their favorite in the same breath this time around. That's so disingenuous.
A quick review
Roger Marcum's out.
Jon Draud confirmed he's in the mix and also indicated he was not married to the CATS test, which may be becoming a litmus test for some.
Kentucky Progress reports: "Sen. Ken Winters (R-Murray) confirmed this morning he is interested in the Kentucky Education Commissioner's job."
What about former OEA Honcho Penney Sanders and veteran Super H M Snodgrass? Are they still in play?
Since Doug Whitlock is going to be at Eastern for the next three years, is Harry Moberly lurking? Stay tuned.
Also, in their recent debate, Fletcher disses CATS; Beshear stops short of disagreeing.
"I think our test takes too long. It's not predictive. It doesn't help us identify students that need help. It doesn't help us intervene. And it doesn't really match with the No Child Left Behind and integrate that the way it could to make that easier. It takes a lot of time. It's a lot of work from teachers that could be spent in actually teaching students. So I would like as we did with increasing the curriculum requirements for graduation to align that with what is needed in the workplace. I want tests that are simple, basic, are on the website so parents can have the access and that are predictive."
He's apparently against CATS for reasons that make sense...and reasons that don't. But I'm not really sure I know what he was saying.
"Too long?" Arguably. Especially since NCLB messed it up. And, then KDE added their own DOK mess to that.
"Not predictive?" It's a summative assessment. It's not supposed to be predictive. That's the job of a formative assessment. But it sure would be great if teachers had effective formative instruments that were diagnostic, prescriptive and turned around the data in a hurry.
"Doesn't help us intervene?" Again, a formative assessment should help us intervene before the summative. That's the prescriptive part. But you're not going to get that in a statewwide accountability system.
"Doesn't match NCLB?" Good. Throw out NCLB if you must, but I think I'd try to fix it.
"It takes a lot of time." Said that already.
"It's a lot of work from teachers that could be spent in actually teaching students." OK. You don't fatten a calf by weighing it. But the public wants accountability. Are you going to provide that or not? If so, it's going to take something away from teaching. We need a reasonable and stable system.
"So I would like...to align that with what is needed in the workplace." Now what's he talking about? Which workplace? A vocational test of some kind?
"I want tests that are simple, basic, are on the website so parents can have the access and that are predictive." It's hard to imagine a worse security problem for an assessment system than putting the test on a website so that parents can have access to it. Let's just put the SAT out there while we're at it.
Fletcher's proposal, IF I understand what he's saying, would make a bad situation worse.
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