Despite what some claim, Kentucky can take some lessons from Tennessee

I’ve been in an interesting Twitter discussion about charter schools and the relative education performance of Kentucky and Tennessee. Supposedly, Kentucky does better.

Really?

Because charter schools are reported to do especially well for black students – an area where Kentucky faces serious challenges – I fired up the NAEP Data Explorer to see how black students in both states compared on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) on the earliest tests where both states participated (1992 except for Grade 8 reading, where NAEP didn’t start state testing until 1998) and the latest 2017 results.

Table 1 shows what I found.

------ Table 1 ------

KY and TN Blacks Earliest and 2017 NAEP G4 and G8 Math and Reading

Table 1 presents information for both Grade 4 and Grade 8 testing in NAEP math and reading. The NAEP Scale Scores for both test years for both states are shown for each grade and subject. Underneath the scores for each year a section highlighted in yellow shows if the scores for the two states were statistically significantly different (remember NAEP is a sampled assessment and all the scores have statistical sampling errors that render small differences nothing more than ties). I also show the change in scores over time for each state for each grade and subject.

First, here’s more on how to read the table. The top section of the table shows that in Grade 4 NAEP Reading, Kentucky scored 196 in 1992 and 204 in 2017. The difference in those scores, as shown in the “Score Change Over Time” column, was eight points. The yellow section in the Grade 4 Reading part of the table shows the difference in the 1992 scores for Kentucky and Tennessee was not statistically significant. In other words, this has to be treated as a tie. Likewise, the difference in the 2017 scores also was not statistically significantly different.

As you look through the table, in most cases Tennessee has moved up to either match or go ahead relative to Kentucky. For details on that, click the “Read more” link.

Let’s discuss each table section in more detail.

Grade 4 Reading

As you can see, once we properly consider the sampling errors in the NAEP scores, Kentucky’s blacks didn’t outperform those in Tennessee for Grade 4 reading in either 1992 or 2017. The score differences are not statistically significant and should be considered as ties.

This is the best story for Kentucky in the table.

Now, hold on tight, because this gets rough – fast – for the Bluegrass State’s black students.

Grade 4 Math

Math has been a real problem in Kentucky ever since the launch of the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990 (KERA). Here we see solid evidence of that problem for Kentucky’s black fourth grade students.

Back in 1992 Kentucky’s black fourth grade students statistically significantly outperformed Tennessee’s, but the tables turned solidly in Tennessee’s blacks’ favor by 2017. On the most recent NAEP, Tennessee’s blacks outscored Kentucky’s by a statistically significant amount.

Note that along the way Tennessee’s black fourth grade students saw a far larger increase in scale score change over time than Kentucky’s blacks mustered.

Any way you slice this part of the table, Tennessee sorely bested Kentucky’s black math performance for the fourth grade. There is no tie here. It’s a very solid win for Tennessee.

Grade 8 Reading

NAEP didn’t start to test Grade 8 reading until 1998, well after KERA launched. Over this somewhat shorter period than covered by the other NAEP assessments, Kentucky’s black eighth students have made no progress what so ever, turning in flat 246 reading scores in both the earliest and most recent years of State NAEP Grade 8 Reading assessments.

In notable contrast, Tennessee’s black eighth grade students increased their NAEP Scale Score by eight points. That means Tennessee erased its earlier, statistically significantly lower scoring compared to Kentucky in 1998 by the time the 2017 NAEP came along. Now, Tennessee is in a statistical tie with Kentucky for NAEP Grade 8 reading and seems to have the momentum to move ahead going forward.

Kentucky’s blacks clearly lost their advantage here.

Grade 8 Math

The eighth grade math situation is almost a repeat of what we saw for the fourth grade. Back in 1992 Kentucky’s black eighth graders scored seven points higher than Tennessee’s, though sampling issues dictate that we must consider this rather large difference a statistical tie.

However, by 2017 Tennessee had more than doubled Kentucky’s 11-point score increase and now statistically significantly outscores the Bluegrass State by six points for Grade 8 NAEP math.

This is clearly a loss for the Bluegrass State’s eighth graders.

It is worth noting that over the period of time covered in the table above, Tennessee launched a number of charter schools. While I don’t have specific information, I suspect that Tennessee’s charters are like those across the rest of the nation, featuring high enrollment of black students. I also suspect Tennessee’s charters perform particularly well with black students as was recently found true in major urban areas across the nation (See, for example, Page v here).

So, it may well be that the clear wins for Tennessee’s blacks versus Kentucky’s blacks in the math cases in the table above are aided, at least to some degree, by those Tennessee charter schools. That might include improvements the state’s traditional system made in reaction to the competition from charters.

Regardless, if Kentucky wants to improve its very serious white minus black achievement gaps in math, it is clear the Bluegrass State should pay some attention to what its southern neighbor is doing, because whatever the reason, Tennessee is doing notably better for black kids.