The religion of KERA
From Kentucky Citizen Digest, April, 1998

I’ve finally figured it out. After 8 years, it has finally dawned on me why it is that, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, proponents of Kentucky’s education reforms continue to maintain that they are working:

KERA is a religion.

Like many religions, it involves certain sacraments, the chief of which, in this case, is an unwavering commitment to the state’s test, called “KIRIS” (Kentucky Instructional Results Information System), a commitment which no amount of evidence can ever influence.

Over the last five years, report after report has found serious problems with the KIRIS tests. And what has been the response of KERA’s supporters? They sing their Hosannas ever louder – the better to drown out the ugly facts.

Here are the facts:
 

	In 1995, a panel of six nationally-recognized testing experts found KIRIS to be “seriously flawed.”
	The same year, a team from Western University pronounced the test unfit for use as a basis for rewards and sanctions of Kentucky schools.
	While KIRIS has been finding huge increases in student achievement, scores on other widely used tests, such as ACT, SAT, the Armed Forces Qualification test and others, have stayed stagnant, or, in the case of CTBS and CAT-5 scores, actually declined.

With this evidence in hand, critics of the testing program called for changes. And in the beginning of the 1998 General Assembly session, because of a torrent of calls by concerned parents and teachers, it began to look like we might get them.

But the High Priests of KERA rended their garments and refused to listen to such blasphemies.

“How can we abandon the test now, when we have made so much progress?” they asked. How do we know we have made progress? “Why, because scores on the tests have risen,” they answer. But isn’t the reliability of these scores precisely what is at issue? To this question, however, they have no answer to give.

In fact, the reliability and validity of the test is simply have not been big issues with KIRIS supporters.

That we were potentially wasting hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money on a test that does not reliably tell us which schools are improving and which are not is of little concern to those who pray at the altar of KIRIS. More important to them is what they call “instruction improvement.”

They believe, with religious fervor, that the test, particularly the portfolios, improves instruction.

Although it is the least reliable part of the test, and the most controversial, it is nearest to the hearts of the followers of the Gospel of KERA. It is a collection of a student’s best work over the course of the year. It is this program, they say, that has the greatest instructional benefits.

That is why, when a panel of nationally-recognized testing experts called in 1995 for dropping the portfolios from the program because they were inappropriate for use with a high stakes testing system, the ruling elders of the Church of KERA pronounced the idea anathema.

There is no doubt that portfolios and short essay questions have changed instruction. But how? According to a report by the Rand Corp., many teachers are de-emphasizing basic skills. Why? Because they perceived that the KIRIS test did not measure them -- so why teach them?

Instructional improvement indeed.

The claim that portfolios have improved instruction is statement of faith. Other than questionable KIRIS scores, where is the evidence?

After the passage by the state Senate this year of SB 243, a bill that would have made major changes in the KIRIS tests, test supporters dug in. The produced HB 627, a bill that fell far short of serious change.

In the end, a so-called “compromise” bill was produced. HB 53, which appears to lie closer to HB 627 than SB 243. It renames the test “CATS.”  An obvious reference to Kentucky basketball, and probably a good indication that cheerleading, which took the place of serious analysis of the state’s test, will still be the order of the day.
 

Key Family Foundation Contacts: Kent Ostrander, Executive Director Martin Cothran, Senior Associate Policy Analyst