Comments on the Charter School Debate: What Does Kentucky's Education Progress Really Look Like?

Lewis and Solomon Picture for Debate Comments

If you have not taken time to read our major charter school debate with UK professors Wayne Lewis and Martin Solomon, you owe it to yourself and Kentucky’s children to take some time to do so. The professors provide a good introduction into the issues of establishing charter schools in Kentucky from the viewpoint of both a strong proponent of charters and a sharp critic of these school choice options for parents.

Now that the professors have weighed in, I’m adding more to the discussion. I’m going to do a couple of blogs on this next subject – education progress in Kentucky – because it came up in the debates and I think very few in Kentucky really understand what the data shows. I start today with a look at the most recent and earliest available scores in reading, math, science and writing for Kentucky from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). I think the results from this respected, federally managed testing program clearly show Kentucky has made a little progress, but the Bluegrass State still has a very, very long way to go, and it’s getting there at a snails’ pace by only relying on our traditional public school system.

I assembled the graphic below using a powerful online tool called the NAEP Data Explorer. The various bars in the graphic show the earliest and most recently available NAEP scores for Kentucky students for reading, mathematics, science and writing from the fourth and eighth grade state level NAEP testing.

Most Recent and Earliest NAEP for KY to 2013 graphic

To begin, notice that, after 23 years of education reform in Kentucky, most of the state’s NAEP proficiency rates hover only somewhere inside the 30 to 40 percent range. None are has high as 50 percent. Also notice that it has taken several decades to reach the current, clearly unimpressive, proficiency rates. That leads to an interesting question.

What would be a good NAEP target proficiency for Kentucky?

Before going further, I should note there has been a lot of discussion – and no real consensus – about what should be a reasonable proficiency rate for students on tests such as the NAEP. Some simply claim the NAEP’s scoring is too hard, but I don’t agree with that. As I have pointed out elsewhere, Kentucky’s eighth grade NAEP proficiency rates for reading and math agree very closely with the percentages of students from the very same year groups that perform at or above the ACT EXPLORE test Benchmark Scores that show those students are on track for college. EXPLORE is linked to the ACT college entrance test, which has real data supporting what scores relate to real college success, so the NAEP to EXPLORE relationship seems to be a fairly compelling comparison.

In fact, according to ACT, Inc. research, the Benchmark Scores probably also relate well to the skill levels needed to do well in non-college living wage jobs, too. My point here is that the NAEP performance level to reach a score of “Proficient” is probably not far off what we really need to determine full college and career readiness.

My next point is that it was unreasonable in No Child Left Behind to demand that every student should reach proficiency. It makes no sense to apply that standard to a notable portion of the students with learning disabilities, for example. In Kentucky the learning disabled students make up somewhere around 13 percent of our total public school enrollment.

So, considering the above points, I think it isn’t unreasonable to talk about a suitable NAEP proficiency rate target around 80 percent or so, and I’ll use that figure as a talking point going forward. In truth, a somewhat higher target rate could also be supported, but I’ll use the 80 percent figure here.

Continuing the main discussion

Now, let’s talk about rates of progress indicated in the graphic. For example, in Grade 4 reading, which NAEP first conducted at the state level in 1992, Kentucky’s proficiency rate has only gone from 23 to 36 percent. Over the 21 years involved, this works out to an annual rate of improvement of just 0.62 of a percentage point per year. At this rate, it will take Kentucky 71 more years to produce a fourth grade reading proficiency rate of 80 percent.

The picture is even worse in Grade 8 NAEP Reading. Grade 8 NAEP Reading was first administered in 1998 and most recently in 2013. In that 15-year period Kentucky’s proficiency rate only edged up eight percentage points. That is a rate of improvement of only 0.53 of a percentage point per year. If this trend continues, Kentucky won’t see its eighth grade reading proficiency rate reach the 80 percent level for 79 more years – the year 2093! Unless something changes, babies born in Kentucky today won’t see reasonable proficiency rates in reading until they are quite old.

So, the takeaway here is that while Kentucky has made a little progress in education by relying solely on the existing traditional public school system, the rate of progress so far is disappointing, and we are not improving nearly fast enough to get most of our children the education they need. Clearly, something is needed to help spur the traditional system, and charter schools look like a viable way to help that process.