The Commonwealth Accountability and Testing System, widely known as "CATS," was a way of rating the progress of schools in Kentucky. 

In 2009, Kentucky lawmakers did away with this old way of rating schools based on how kids in grades 3-8 and 10-12 fared on state and national tests and other measures like attendance and dropout rates.

A new system is due out in 2012. In the meantime, Kentucky is using an interim testing system for accountability purposes.

A state exam called the Kentucky Core Content Test will continue to assess students' abilities in reading, math, science, social studies and on-demand writing. These tests are being rewritten for the 2012 rollout.

• Interim performance reports

Background 

Students in some grades also take national tests, including the ACT (a college admission test), and versions of the test targeting eighth- and 10th-graders (called EXPLORE and PLAN, respectively). 

To determine how a school rated in CATS, individual student scores from the state and national tests were combined with measures of non-academic success such as attendance and the percentages of students who were held back a grade or drop out of school. Schools were given an overall accountability grade that ranged from 0 to 140. 

By the year 2014, all schools were supposed to have an overall score of 100. In order to judge progress toward that goal, schools were judged every year on goals that were individually calculated for each school.

The state determined that a school had met its goal, made progress, or was in need of assistance on the basis of how its two-year average score compared with the predetermined goal.

School and district CATS scores were publicized in detailed Kentucky Performance Reports.

• KPR archives