(WHAS11) - An audit of last year’s CATS test has found that nearly half the student’s scores on the writing portfolios were inflated.  Critics of the CATS test say that’s proof that the whole test needs to be dumped or at the very least, the writing portfolios need to go.  But some teachers say that would be a bad idea.

Kentucky lawmakers are debating whether to dump the CATS test or at least cut out the writing portion of the test.  An audit of last year’s writing scores is giving them some ammunition.

Every year about 140,000 fourth, seventh and eleventh grade Kentucky students spend the year writing a series of papers called portfolios.  Samples from those portfolios are included in the CATS test and scored by teachers in the students’ home school district.  But auditors of the writing portfolio scores disagreed with 41% of the scores, concluding that 94% of the scores in the highest, distinguished category were too high and 61% in the next highest proficient category were too high.

Department of education officials say there’s just disagreement among test scorers, it doesn’t mean the scoring is subjective or that students writing scores were inflated:

State lawmakers who want to deep six the writing portfolio portion of the test say teachers are spending too much time, and the state is spending too much money on portfolios and their scoring.

Teacher Katie Strange wrote the portfolios when she was a student, and Katie says some teachers might let their emphasis on thoughtful student writing slip if portfolios aren’t part of the CATS test.

The Kentucky education department has begun a new way of scoring the writing portfolios which it hopes will cut down the differences in scoring between the students’ own teachers and the auditors.

A state senate bill that would abolish the CATS test has virtually no chance of passing the house and would face a veto by Governor Beshear if it ever got to his desk.