$1 BILLION FOR KIRIS BUT NO EVIDENCE OF IMPROVMENT. From: gkcunn01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu Date sent: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 00:49:42 -0500 To: arthurhu@halcyon.com Subject: Re: UCLA says KIRIS Flawed, Invalid - When will WA figure this out? At 08:35 PM 1/25/98 +0000, you wrote: >BILL WOULD KILL KIRIS, UCLA SAYS TEST FLAWED, INVALID, START OVER >AGAIN \clip\98\03\kirifail.txt 1/24/98 Lexington Herald Leader >Lawmakers struggle to save KIRIS test from outright ban By Linda B. >Blackford HERALD-LEADER EDUCATION WRITER "To change the assessment now >would be a radical mistake." [the test IS a radical mistake!] Sen. >Gex "Jay" Williams, R-Verona has Senate Bill 113 would suspend the >test for a year and replace it with a standardized test ...about the >same time that a national testing expert said that KIRIS' scoring was >flawed and results were invalid. UCLA Professor James Catterall urged >the state to throw out past test scores and start over In six years, Kentucky has spent about a billion dollars on KIRIS. The UCLA report was written by James Catterall and he tries to be as sympathetic as possible with KIRIS because he knows he'll get no more contracts if he does not, but he declares that the scores being reported are entirely bogus. There is not a scintilla of evidence that the achievment of Kentucky students has risen. There is plenty of evidence that it has stayed the same. The question is should Kentucky spend another billion in the next six years? As the article points out there are plenty of legislators who think we should. In addition to the Catterall report, Coopers and LaBrandt (not sure of spelling) did an analysis of the costs. They could not conduct any sort of audit because there are few records of how the billion was spent. Ed Reidy the KDE associate commissioner for testing and Rich Hill CEO for Advanced Systems worked out much of the contract with verbal agreements.