Saturday, March 21, 2009

Does the death of KERA mean the death of education reform?

Richard Day has a very informative post on his blog Kentucky School News and Commentary about the reaction to the now deceased CATS testing system. But in the otherwise fairly accurate post, he interprets me as disagreeing with Dan Kelly's assertion that the end of the CATS tests was not the end of education reform in Kentucky. But I did not say that education reform in Kentucky was dead: I said that KERA was dead. Richard fails to make that distinction.

If education reform and KERA are synonymous, then we're in even bigger trouble than a lot of us thought.

2 comments:

Richard Day said...

Hummm.

You opened by declaring KERA dead - and closed by asking the last one out of the Kentucky's Education Reform Headquarters to turn off the lights. So, yeah, it was linked in my mind.

Since education reform in Kentucky is described by our state school laws, presently called KERA, you might want to clarify how you mean "reform."

In any case, I hope you enjoyed St. Susan and the dragon.

Martin Cothran said...

Well, after all, that's what they were doing in Kentucky Education Reform Headquarters: KERA. I suppose I took it for granted that there are other ways to reform education than those attempted in KERA, like, oh, I don't know, returning to basic skills and traditional academic content.

And, yes, I did enjoy St. Susan and the Dragon--and have a response coming out tomorrow morning.

Thanks.