Now that the damage is done, H-L says leave it alone.

If it ain't broke don't fix it. But what if it is...

Unfortunately, the changes required to Kentucky's assessment system by NCLB took a local impulse toward nornative assessment and layered on top a new mess. The retreat from a performance based system restricts the curriculum and makes "teaching to the test" a valid complaint.

Now we've got 2 scores that we use for different purposes. What are the chances the public will trust that?

More Multiple choice, less performance-based. Not what the law called for.

DOK. Bloom rip off.

Too bad this editorial didn't come a year ago.

Skip Kifer is correct. If you want to measure change, don't change the measure. But I wonder, did H-L ask Skip if he thinks we've got a good system in place right now?

Confidence drain
Stop changing CATS testing system

Everyone should resist the urge to tinker with CATS, Kentucky's public school testing system, for a while.

That's asking a lot of politicians in Frankfort and Washington and of testing experts, especially when there's so much clamor over the amount of time students and teachers must spend on standardized testing.

But each time the goal lines are moved, as they were this year, there's a loss of public confidence that schools are really being held accountable for teaching every child...

...What bothered educators most about this year's alteration of the scoring scale was that it made it harder for them to analyze changes in performance and therefore to evaluate whether what they're doing is working...