No one knows how much CATS costs, committee finds

Oh dear. While some of us were thinking that the problem with CATS was that it costs too much, all of a sudden we find out that that's not the problem. The problem is we don't know how much it costs. Turns out that our wonderful education bureaucrats have no idea how much the monstrous state education testing system is setting us back because of poor accounting.

All state auditors could determine is that it costs at least $18.6 million, a higher figure than has been reported before. But there is no way, given the state's poor accounting, to know the total cost of the tests because no figures are available to determine how much local school districts are spending, and amount that is likely to be very high.

"There isn't a mechanism to be able to determine the cost at the local level for the assessment testing," Brian Lykins, director of special audits in the auditor's office, told the Louisville Courier-Journal.

This comes at a bad time for supporters of the tests, since President of the Senate David Willliams has announced that he would like to see the test eliminated.

Stay tuned on this issue...