The Kentucky Department of Education may not be able to say the Clark County Public Schools have once again reached distinguished status, but we are certainly proud of the efforts being made.

The state released the KPREP scores earlier this week and our school district and individual buildings appear to have represented themselves and their students very well once again.

The component that makes it more confusing this year is that the state is in the process of implementing a new accountability and measurement system for public schools so they no longer recognize buildings or districts using the familiar labels of: needs improvement, proficient or distinguished.

Although this it is disappointing not to know exactly where the schools stand, we are very encouraged to see math scores improving across the board. Other subjects including reading, language mechanics and social studies showed improvement as well.

We still believe that standardized testing, when used as the primary or sole measure of a student’s success, is an absolutely flawed approach. However, when coupled with a variety of other academic, curriculum and development measurements, testing can be a tool.

We are disappointed the state changes have made it far more difficult to read and understand the progress that districts and individual schools are making. Eliminating these designations also has a significant negative impact on schools that worked hard to achieve distinguished status because being able to share that within the community was a huge point of pride.

We urge the Kentucky Department of Education to quickly implement its new accountability model, one that we hope creates a very clear measuring stick the community can use to gauge their schools’ effectiveness.