CATS Scores: How important are they?

By SUSAN WHEELDON, CJ Staff Writer
Commonwealth Journal

SOMERSET, Ky. October 17, 2007 10:18 am

— What makes a school — or a school district — a good one?
Is it test scores? Or is it the whole package, including factors such as the size of the school, the programs and sports offered, teachers, a healthy amount of arts and humanities courses, and how well the students are treated and made to feel about the school and themselves while in attendance?
I would think it is the latter.
Sometimes, however, schools are sometimes pushed so hard to achieve high standardized test scores that those scores grab too much of the focus.
It’s not a bad thing that schools are pushed to achieve their very best, but some areas get left by the wayside when the focus is on test scores. Moreover, just because a student can pass a test, does that mean he or she has really learned the concepts?
Then I wonder, in that push for lofty numbers, if some teachers forget about the real difference they can make and are making in children’s lives everyday?
I assure everyone reading this, what a child will remember in the years to come won’t be how they or their school scored on a test.
I probably can’t recall any of my test scores from high school; however, I can remember distinctly the teachers I had for my journalism classes and how other teachers impacted my life, because they went out of their way to know me as a person.
The same goes for college. More than anything, I remember those professors who I felt truly tried to connect with me as a student and as a person.
The No Child Left Behind test and the CATS test, which wants to have every school at the proficient level by 2014, are great ideas, but their outcomes, positive or negative, aren’t what determines whether or not a child will become a productive member of society.
As well being encouraged to perform well on these tests, students should also be pushed in other areas as well. How they function socially is one such way; the strength of their character is another.
In recent weeks, myself and others at the Commonwealth Journal dealt with conflicts with some folks in local schools regarding how the CATS test scores were covered in our paper. While as reporters, we think about the situation in a neutral onlooker’s perspective as much as we can, those in the education field can look at things much more specifically, which might lead them to the conclusion that we the media are biased, when we are only telling the facts.
Fact is, there are many schools to cover within the three school districts, and we here at the Commonwealth Journal , where one reporter covers each district, have no agenda in regards to any of the schools.
Sometimes the news is just that: the news.
I myself currently have cousins enrolled in all three school systems in the county. My niece and nephew, who are not in school yet, don’t even live in Pulaski County.
Working at the newspaper for years, I have seen stories which could be construed as either good or bad for each school district in this county. And just like it is with any other facet of this job, some of those topics that powers that be (in this case, school officials) may love talking about, and others they may hate. In either case, I am still a reporter and it is my job to cover topics that the newspaper feels the community needs to know about.
I completely understand how much time and work teachers put into what they do — my own mom was a teacher — and particularly in helping their school do better on test scores, I don’t believe how a school scores on a test, however, ultimately changes how a parent feels about the school their child attends.
To think that test scores make or break a school. a parent’s opinion, or, for that matter, the state as a whole, isn’t looking at the whole picture.
Students can be inspired by their teachers. They can be pushed to be a better person. They can find hope that their life will be better. They can have the best time of their lives learning about something. They can even be saved from a bad situation by a teacher with the right priorities.
None of those things can be seen in the plain and simple number a school might happen to score on a test.
Next year, I hope all those who work in the schools will be able to remember on the day that the test scores come out that their job means much more than that score to the children they’re teaching — and to the community itself.