Consensus on Assessment and Accountability

Calling themselves, 3KT, The Kentucky School Boards Association (KSBA), Kentucky Association of School Superintendents (KASS), and Kentucky Association of School Administrators (KASA), three of the state's most influential education advocacy groups joined in a statement of support for changes to CATS, Kentucky's assessment and accountability system.

KSBA, KASS, and KASA agree on many of the core issues in the debate to create a second generation of assessment and accountability in Kentucky’s education reform efforts. The founding members of the 3KT advocacy group do not collectively endorse all of the same concepts and issues; however, we can support the following common threads:

• Any new assessment must be valid at the student level and provide for longitudinal analysis of student achievement.
• Any new accountability system must include student level accountability.
• Any new assessment must include both norm-referenced testing (NRT) and criterion-referenced items. Our testing system should permit us to make comparisons available under an NRT model, but it must also establish proficiency standards and measure student performance against this
  goal.
• Any new assessment and accountability system should take a balanced approach that includes formative and summative assessments.
• Any new assessment and accountability system should incorporate end-of-course exams in core content areas to ensure curriculum alignment and
  rigor.
• Any new assessment and accountability system should align with NCLB/ESEA requirements and produce single, coherent results for students, parents, teachers, administrators, and our communities.
• Any new assessment system should reduce the amount of time spent testing, shift testing to the end of the school year, and provide more immediate results (60 days).
• Any new assessment system should include both multiple choice questions and open response items.
• Any new assessment system should eliminate the portfolio requirement at the 4th grade.
• Any new assessment and accountability system should be developed AFTER the revision of standards, and state standards should be narrowed, deepened, and amended to reflect accepted national standards.
• Any new assessment and accountability system should remove arts & humanities and practical living/vocational skills as long as these areas remain in the core content and a rigorous program evaluation is completed on each.

3 education groups back Beshear pension effort

I'm busy with curriculum writing this week and haven't posted much but here are a couple of quick hits. And I'm willing to support this first one - even without a seat at the table.

This from H-L:

FRANKFORT --Three Kentucky education groups are backing Gov. Steve Beshear's plan for a special legislative session later this month on public employee pension reform.

In a joint announcement Tuesday, the Kentucky Association of School Administrators, the Kentucky Association of School Superintendents and the Kentucky School Boards Association supported the Democratic governor's proposal to begin to overhaul the state's retirement systems in a possible session to begin June 23.

"This endorsement followed assurances by the governor's office that an issue of paramount importance to local school leaders -- any changes in the retirement system in which classified school employees participate -- will be thoroughly studied for action at a future time and will not be part of the proposed special session this month," the groups said in a statement.

The groups said their endorsement is also contingent on having "a place at the table -- which has not been the case so far." ...