By William Croyle
Enquirer contributor

One student's keen eye got the Kentucky Department of Education into a mess over the state's annual assessment test administered this week.

Some questions got out early.

The department now may rely on the honesty of 1,800 high school seniors statewide, including some at Beechwood High School, in Fort Mitchell, to clean the mess up.

Either that or the students will have to take the test again.

A student taking the 90-minute senior writing exam of the Kentucky Core Contest Test, part of the Commonwealth Accountability Testing System (CATS), recognized some of the questions on the test.

They had been posted on a Web site in November as part of a practice test.

"We had a test site set up so that students with disabilities could go online and practice for the test," said Lisa Gross, spokeswoman for the department of education. "We had some items that should not have been on that site because they were part of this year's actual test."

The questions appeared on one of six different test forms that were randomly handed out to students taking the test this week.

"The chances that a student saw the questions on the Web site are tiny," said Gross. "But this is a very secure system and we need to be sure."

The test is part of Kentucky's high-stakes CATS test accountability series. Administered annually, the CATS test scores are used to determine performance and funding levels for local school districts.

The state first announced that the 1,800 seniors (about 5 percent of the 37,000 seniors statewide) who took the test form in question, including about 13 of the roughly 75 seniors from Beechwood High School, would have to retake the exam.

The do-over is a solution that didn't sit well with many of the 26 school districts in the state that chose to take the test during the April 21-May 2 testing session.

"The real problem for us is that you're now asking seniors who are graduating in five weeks to retake a test that they tried hard on the first time, but doesn't mean anything to them," said Beechwood Independent Schools Superintendent Fred Bassett

In response to the feedback from districts, education officials spent part of the day Thursday working on a form that would be signed by students and their teachers, saying that the students did not see the test questions in advance. The form would be submitted in lieu of the students retaking the test.

"I haven't heard that we are definitely going to do it, but it was being discussed today," Gross said Thursday afternoon. "We trust our students, and this may be a better solution than having them take the test again."

Bassett had not yet heard about that solution from the state, but said he'd welcome it.

"We would certainly be happier with that," he said.

The Beechwood and Fort Thomas school districts, along with high schools in the Covington School District, were the only Northern Kentucky schools that elected to take the test this session. Other Northern Kentucky schools opted for April 28-May 9 or May 5-16 and will not be affected by the glitch.

Covington schools handed out the test about two hours before they were notified of the mistake. Jeff Volter, executive director of learning support for Covington schools, said about 33 of the 200 seniors got the bad test form.

Volter said making the students retake the test would hurt the credibility of CATS.

He agreed with Bassett that having the students sign a form that says they did not see the test questions ahead of time would be the best solution.

Fort Thomas Independent Schools Superintendent Larry Stinson said his district had not given out that part of the test yet, and was therefore unaffected.