FRANKFORT — Starting this fall, Kentucky's public schools will be judged not only by their test scores, but also on how much progress they make and whether they're closing learning gaps among disadvantaged students, the state board of education decided Wednesday.
It's the first phase of a new accountability system that will replace the Commonwealth Accountability Testing System, or CATS, which was dismantled as part of Senate Bill 1, a wide-ranging education reform bill passed by the Kentucky legislature in March 2009.
The new system will also measure how individual students are progressing academically — something CATS wasn't designed to do.
Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday said the state board's action was the “first of many steps“ toward a new accountability system that will do a better job of measuring schools' success in educating its students.
Officials with Jefferson County Public Schools, who have criticized the old system, said Wednesday they see “several pluses to the new system.”
“For one, it will be looking at student growth over time, which has never been done before,” said Dena Dossett, JCPS director of planning. “It's important because we will be able to see how individual students are progressing through their educational experience, whether they are making progress from year to year.”
Under the new accountability system, schools and districts will be classified as distinguished, proficient, needs improvement or persistently low achieving.
A new, statewide written test is still in the process of being developed, but students in grades 3-8 will be given the new test next spring in math, reading, science, social studies and writing.
High school students will take end-of-course assessments once they complete algebra II, English II, U.S. history and biology to determine if they have mastered those subjects.
Beginning next spring, the math and reading tests will be based on a new set of standards approved by the state board of education last year designed to cover fewer topics but in much greater depth — another requirement of Senate Bill 1.
The standards are intended to better prepare students for college and career, said Lisa Gross, a spokeswoman for the Kentucky Department of Education. In some cases, concepts that are now being taught in students' sophomore and junior years may be accelerated to eighth or ninth grade.
That may initially cause test scores to drop, officials acknowledged.
“We expect student achievement to drop in the first year because we will be teaching to a new set of standards in reading and math,” Gross said.
New standards will also be developed in social studies and science over the next few years — subjects that will be included in stateside tests, Gross said.
Holliday said officials won't know if the new accountability system will make it easier or harder for schools and districts to meet their goals until after the new statewide test is given next spring and scores are released in the summer of 2012.
The new accountability system will hold schools accountable for up to five areas, depending on whether they teach elementary, middle or high school students. Each will count for a percentage of a school's overall score:
Achievement — all students will be expected to eventually score proficient or distinguished on state tests.
Learning gap — Schools will be expected to close the gap on state test scores for groups that traditionally score lower than average, including minority, low income and disabled students and students with limited English proficiency.
Academic progress — Schools will be judged on how fast students make progress on state tests, with faster progress resulting in a higher score.
College and career readiness — Middle and high schools will be judged on whether students are being made ready for college, as judged by their performance on the ACT EXPLORE, job certifications and other tests.
Graduation rate — High schools will score higher the more of their students graduate.
Parents “should be able see how their child is progressing from year to year and how they compare to their peers,” she said. “That is our overall goal.”
Schools will score more points the more students they have who score proficient or distinguished in reading, math, social studies, science and writing. Schools get bonus points for students who score distinguished, the highest score, and lose points for students who score novice, the lowest.
Middle and high schools will be judged on how well they prepare students for colleges and careers, as measured by tests such as the ACT EXPLORE, which prepares eighth- and ninth-graders for high school coursework and has content similar to the ACT; by job certifications; and by other measures that have yet to be determined.
Gross said Kentucky's goal is for 100 percent of students to reach proficiency, the same as it was for CATS.
Although schools will be required to close achievement gaps, as well as make progress overall, each student will be counted only once for accountability purposes.
For example, if a student is black and low income, his or her score would only be counted once for accountability purposes, not twice, as happened before.
But student scores will still be reported separately by sub-populations so schools will be able to tell how specific student groups performed on the test.
“A big concern for many schools was that if they had a student that happened to fall into two, three or four of those subgroups, that student would be counted two, three or four times,” said Lu Young, the superintendent of Jessamine County Schools who also serves as chairman of the state's School Curriculum, Assessment and Accountability Council, a group that consists of educators, parents and business leaders from across Kentucky. “Under this new system, that student would only be counted once.”
Young said Wednesday “including student growth as part of the accountability model was a big deal for many districts. … A lot of schools had made gains in the past, but were never given credit for those gains,” she said. “This changes that.”
But there are also concerns.
“One of our worries is that we are going to be working with two accountability systems — one for the state and the other for No Child Left Behind,” a separate federal school accountability system, Dossett said. “Having all of these components at the state level are good to include, but I think it could add some complexity to the system.”
Ken Draut, an associate commissioner with the Kentucky Department of Education, said Wednesday the state is working with the U.S. Department of Education to “see if we can use this new model for No Child Left Behind purposes.”
Holliday said he's not sure if the federal government will allow the state's model to be used, but said he has talked to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan's office about possibly using Kentucky's accountability system as a model for other states.
Reporter Antoinette Konz can be reached at (502) 582-4232.
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