Bill signals retreat from KERA goals

This from the Messenger-Inquirer:

Fourteen years ago, in early 1995, the mood was celebratory at Cravens Elementary School on Owensboro's west end. The little school that had failed to break 30 on the initial KIRIS accountability tests three years before, a score that reduced teachers to tears, was in line to receive the maximum financial reward for dramatic improvement on the battery of tests.

Cravens' score on the 1991-92 baseline test was 29.5. The next year the school improved to 35.6 on the test. The following year, fourth-graders recorded a score of 52.5, far exceeding the school's goal. Cravens, transformed by the gritty perseverance of its staff, was off and running.

Now we wonder if the days of that kind of success story, and many others like it, are over. While we would never doubt that many of our local educators will teach with every bit as much integrity as before, it's a fact that Kentucky is now in full retreat from the lofty goals set out by KERA in 1990. House and Senate members celebrated in Frankfort last week when the CATS tests were scrapped, and with it public school accountability. What was to have been a review of KERA and CATS, with adjustments being made where necessary, turned into a rout. Senate Bill 1, which Gov. Steve Beshear has indicated he'll sign, passed the Senate 38-0 and the House 93-0.

Just like that, with five years to go for schools to reach the goal of scoring 100 on the CATS test (several schools in this area are already there), the state will devise a new test and a new accountability system. Writing portfolios will no longer be part of the test. The testing period will be shortened. Multiple-choice questions will prevail, and open-response questions, which require students to actually write an answer to questions, will be downplayed. Arts and humanities and vocational studies will no longer be tested.

Schools that were in danger of not making their 2014 accountability goals can look forward to a new accountability system, bailed out, as it were by the legislature's drive to pull back from KERA's tough but fair demands...

...Cravens' faculty dug in deep. Principal Beverly McEnroe said teachers looked at every single thing they did and took everything apart. Every teacher was assigned to a committee to push for improvement in a different part of the Kentucky Education Reform Act. Teachers even started making home visits.

It is not our intention to single out Cravens, except to hold it up as an example of what was and remains possible in public education. Cravens' success was repeated in school after school in this area; it was indicative of what KERA accountability and the mantra that every student can learn and learn at a high level wrought. Better yet, these many years later, the success has continued.

Many of our local and area schools are performing wonderfully. The effort put forth, the expertise gained, the determination demonstrated during nearly two decades of the education reform and accountability movement in Kentucky in so many of our schools has been exemplary and often amazing.

We say this because we are immensely proud of principals, teachers and support personnel and everyone who embraced KERA and its monumental challenges. The good fight was fought, and a generation of students are better for it. In light of what happened last week, we worry about the next generation.