Mark Hebert reports that Governor Beshear said today that he will veto Senate Bill 1 if it gets to his desk.At a news conference, Beshear told reporters the bill undermines educational improvement in Kentucky and would mean an end to students getting tested on their critical thinking skills. Williams' bill proposes using a national multiple choice test to measure each child's improvement. On demand writing would no longer be tested.
Reacting to the governor's opposition to his bill, Williams called Beshear's comments "amateurish" and "pathetic" and said he doesn't believe the governor has even read the bill. Williams defended the move to get rid of the CATS test, saying it isn't measuring students' knowledge of basic skills. Many teachers and school administrators agree with Williams but wonder if a multiple choice, nationally normed test would be any better.
This week, Senator Williams is publicly touting the merits of his own Senate Bill 1, which would do away with the Commonwealth Accountability Testing System (CATS) in our public schools and replace it with multiple choice tests developed for national use.
CATS requires students to exhibit critical thinking by applying those skills to problem solving essay questions. Williams' bill advocates generic national testing that relies on students' skills to answer multiple choice questions by filling in a bubble on an electronic score card.
Our Democratic Governor Steve Beshear has vowed to protect the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) by vetoing SB1 if necessary. Governor Beshear puts Kentucky's children and their education at the very top of his administration's priority list and while he knows we must never stop working to improve the Commonwealth's educational system - SB1 is NOT an improvement.
I find it ironic that a grown man like Senator Williams would publicly revert to tantrum-throwing while simultaneously calling someone else's actions "pathetic?" This is just more desperate behavior from Williams in his last-ditch effort to resuscitate his doomed bill.
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The governor’s reasoning for vetoing SB 1 contains some real disappointments. He claims in the Courier-Journal’s article, “Beshear vows to veto CATS replacement” that our kids now score above the national average on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). That is absolutely false for both fourth and eighth grade math.
The governor’s claim is also misleading for NAEP reading. In reading, we only score above average because we exclude a higher percentage of our students with learning disabilities than the rest of the nation. That inflates our reading scores.
The latest NAEP report cards have clear cautions about considering exclusion before making any comparisons. How can the governor’s advisors be so uninformed?
In addition, the 2007 NAEP scores are not hard to find, so it is particularly disturbing that Kentucky’s governor labors under such clearly erroneous conceptions.
Of course, once the governor learns he has been fed such obviously incorrect information, his vows to veto may vanish even faster than his credibility concerning Kentucky’s actual NAEP performance.
Richard
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