The 17th edition of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s annual report on education has just been released, and this year this widely read analysis refuses to even rank Kentucky’s fourth and eighth grade reading results from the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) in many of its state to state comparison charts.

Why? Kentucky didn’t meet 2011 federal guidelines for inclusion rates for learning disabled and English language learner students. In fact, Kentucky, to use a phrase in the report, “committed violence” against those inclusion standards.

Clearly, the research team at ALEC agrees with my concerns about the trustworthiness of Kentucky’s NAEP reading scores. In fact, on page 31 of the new report the ALEC team uses test scores from Kentucky to make their point about why they are concerned about data for states with high exclusion rates in NAEP.

This continues raises still more very serious questions about whether Kentucky’s NAEP reading scores can be fairly compared to other states. The ALEC report signals a revolt against NAEP data from states that exclude high numbers of students.