Published: February 28, 2008 09:59 pm      

Russell teachers among those with CATS frustrations

Frankfort — Tim Decker and Jason Chapman know how to inspire students interested in the arts — when they can keep them.

But, according to the two Russell Independent School District teachers, they lose students who drop out of their orchestra and art classes to take arts and humanities classes so they can score well on state tests.

Decker is an art teacher at Russell Middle School and Chapman teaches music and orchestra to grades two through 12. He has been honored by the Governor’s Awards for the Arts program and oversees the largest orchestra program in the state. But he loses some students to music appreciation classes.

“Now schools say, if it is not tested, then we will not teach it,” Chapman told a Senate Education Committee on Thursday. “I do not teach standards — I teach students. I cannot teach music to a kid by having him write about music.”

Decker said it is “wrong-headed to evaluate someone’s art ability through a written test.”

The two testified before the committee, which is considering Senate Bill 1, sponsored by Senate Education Committee Chairman Ken Winters, R-Murray, Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville, and Majority Leader Dan Kelly, R-Springfield. The bill would do several things, including more closely aligning curriculum to the demands of college and removing writing portfolios from the assessment process but keeping them as part of a student’s work. But the most controversial part of the bill would replace the Kentucky CATS system of accountability and replace it with standardized, national tests.

Chapman said the bill is a start in the right direction, but he asked senators to go further.

“Instead of questioning what flavor of tests we give our children, maybe we should go back and begin questioning what we call education reform,” Chapman said. He said education now is almost solely concerned with employability and testing — and not educating children.

It’s so bad, Decker said, a new Russell administration “had a lust for higher test scores. They took half of my students away from me. They were then taught by an English teacher in an arts and humanities class,” a subject contained on the CATS tests. Eventually, Decker said, the administration relented and he got his students back, but he’s no fan of the emphasis on testing in Kentucky schools.

Robert Sexton, executive director of the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, an advocacy group for education, conceded the current testing system is inadequate for measuring arts learning, but changing Kentucky’s test will only leave teachers more confused. Nor will it help teachers do a better job of educating their students, he said.

Sexton also favors “criterion testing,” such as Kentucky’s, which measures what students know against standards of what they should understand at age and grade levels. “Norm-referenced” tests proposed in SB 1 measure a student’s performance against that of other students across the nation.

“Norm-referenced tests simply do not measure proficiency because not everyone can score at that level on those tests,” Sexton told the committee. “The test is designed so that cannot happen.”

But Dawn Hills, a fifth-grade teacher in the Fort Thomas Independent School District in northern Kentucky, which continues to outperform most of the state on academic measures, said there are norm-referenced tests that help teachers and parents. The Iowa Test of Basic Skills, which the district uses in addition to CATS, not only shows how her students perform against other students but identifies skills deficiencies which teachers and parents can then address.

“I not only get a writing score but also a vocabulary measure and inference ability,” she said.

Also testifying in support of the bill was Kentucky Chamber of Commerce Executive David Adkisson. The chamber conducted a study last year of higher education and concluded there needs to be alignment between what is taught in college and what is taught and tested in high schools. It also calls for consistent policies on transfer of credits from community colleges to four-year colleges and more dual credit or dual enrollment courses.

The committee did not vote on the bill on Thursday and Winters said it’s likely to take testimony and comment on the bill at its next meeting before taking a vote on whether to pass it to the Senate floor. But as SB 1, it represents Senate leadership’s top legislative priority and is likely to pass that chamber. It faces a tougher test in the House.

RONNIE ELLIS can be reached at rellis@cnhi.com.