Yes, the achievement gaps continue years after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. raised concerns about education
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. March 14, 1964
On THE gaps and How Kentucky’s public education system really ranks – a 2022 update
Years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. also told us he had a dream. In Kentucky, that dream has yet to be fulfilled, in part because:
Kentucky’s white minus Black achievement gaps continue
The scores contained in Figures 1 to 8 below were used to assemble Table 1, which shows the earliest and 2022 NAEP white minus Black achievement gaps for reading and math in Grades 4 and 8 for Kentucky.
Table 1
As you can see, the white minus Black achievement gaps have grown in every case since the early days of the Kentucky Education Reform Act’s (KERA) passage in 1990.
In the case of Grade 4 math, the gap growth of 10 NAEP Scale Score points from 17 to 27 is particularly concerning, as a number of statisticians who work with NAEP consider this to be about an extra year of learning.
In Grade 8 Reading, not only did the gaps grow, but scores actually declined for both white and Black students between 1998, the first year this subject and grade was tested by State NAEP, and 2022.
Combined with the general decay in Kentucky’s Black student performance compared to Black students in other states examined in Figures 5 to 8 below, this is bad news for Kentucky’s largest racial minority group and provides more stark evidence that the state’s traditional public school system simply is not meeting these students’ needs.
But, how does Kentucky’s performance for white and Black students compare to what is happening in other states?
The pre-COVID state ranking pictures from 2019 for both whites and Blacks
Regular readers are already aware of our April 2022 report, While Kentucky’s education system was sleeping…, which presents detailed analyses of how Kentucky really matches up to other states over time in reading and math results for fourth and eighth grade students in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
The findings in the report are straight-forward:
Properly examined NAEP results show neither Kentucky’s whites nor Blacks place anywhere near the middle of the states that have score data available both from the early years of KERA and in the last pre-COVID results for 2019.
For Kentucky’s Black students in particular, the three decades of KERA saw a uniform decay in performance compared to Black students in other states.
Kentucky’s white eighth grade students’ already quite low rankings in KERA’s early years sagged even lower by 2019 for both math and reading.
Some of the performance decays were startling.
In Grade 4 NAEP Math, for example Kentucky’s Black students ranked in third place in 1992 NAEP testing but slid down to 20th place in 2019 among the 33 states that had scores for Black students reported in both years. That was a decay from well above the middle of the pack in 1992 to not much more than 1/3 of the way from the bottom by 2019.
NAEP Grade 8 Math results for white students in Kentucky actually showed even worse results. In 1992 the state’s white students placed only 36th among the 41 states that had scores reported. By 2019, among the same 41 states Kentucky’s ranking sank even further to just 39th place.
But what happened after COVID hit?
How the 2022 picture looks
The eight graphics below provide the same sort of analysis we used for the While Kentucky’s education system was sleeping… report.
White performances
Figure 1
If you compare Figure 1 above to Figure 2 in the While Kentucky’s education system was sleeping… report, you will notice that the District of Columbia schools were included in the earlier report’s graphic but are not shown in the 2022 analysis. Using consistent analysis with District of Columbia left out, Kentucky ranked 40th in 1992 but in 2019 ranked 32nd while the new 2022 results show Kentucky’s whites now rank only 36th. Clearly, the state ranks nowhere near the middle in any case.
Figure 2
Figure 2 above again left out District of Columbia schools, which were included in Figure 3 in the While Kentucky’s education system was sleeping… report. Correcting for the District of Columbia issue, in 1992 Kentucky’s white students ranked 40th for NAEP Grade 4 Math. In 2019, their rank was 38th and in the 2022 case it is a bit higher at 34th. Still, this is far below the middle of the pack and hardly improvement to shout about after three decades of expensive KERA reforms.
Figure 3
The situation for Grade 8 NAEP Reading for Kentucky’s white students is completely unchanged. The state ranked 28th in 1998 (first year NAEP conducted state-level reading in Grade 8) and it saw a lower ranking of 32nd place in both 2019 and 2022. This is obviously isn’t improvement and as of 2022 Kentucky’s whites certainly don’t perform anywhere near middle of the pack, either.
Figure 4
This is sort of a repeat of the white Grade 8 Reading situation. In 1992 Kentucky ranked 36th among states with scores and ranked lower at 39th place in both 2019 and 2022. By the way, in 2019 Kentucky’s NAEP Scale Score for whites in Grade 8 Math was 282, and as you can see in the right side of Figure 4 above, it dropped to just 274 by 2022. The national public school average NAEP Scale Score for whites dropped from 291 in 2019 to 284 in 2022, as well. Even top scoring New Jersey dropped from 304 to 293 in this period. So, COVID seems to have had major impacts in a lot of places. But Kentucky’s white Grade 8 students didn’t’ gain any ranking advantage due to score drops elsewhere. And, the state’s fourth grade performance has been unimpressive, at best.
Black performances
A couple of things impact the Black students’ NAEP scores. First, even when states participate in NAEP, they don’t always have scores reported for Black students. One reason is some states just don’t have many Black students. Small numbers of tested students create unacceptably large sampling errors in the scores, beyond a level NAEP will accept and report. Other issues can result in no score reporting for Blacks, too.
An additional factor peculiar to the 2022 NAEP is there was a reduction in the overall sample sizes for all states. This seems to have further reduced the mix of Black students in some states’ NAEP samples, resulting in a few cases where even fewer states had Black scores reported in both the early years of KERA and in 2022 than in 2019 and the early years.
Figure 5
A total of 32 states had Black student NAEP Grade 4 Reading scores reported in 1992, 2019 and 2022. Kentucky’s Black students’ rank in NAEP Grade 4 Reading was 13th in 1992, 22nd in 2019, and amazingly jumped up to 10th in 2022.
However, there might be an issue with the Kentucky Black sample in the 2022 NAEP scores. According to the NAEP Data Explorer, in 2022 NAEP Grade 4 Reading testing, Kentucky’s Blacks only made up just 9% of the tested sample.
However, according to the 2022 Kentucky School Report Card data, the total Grade 4 public school membership in Kentucky in the 2021-22 school year was 43,883 and Blacks made up 4,466, or 10.2%, of that total. This indicates about one in ten Blacks in Kentucky might be unrepresented in the 2022 Kentucky NAEP sample. Could those missing Blacks have impacted score results?
Figure 6
Here is an example of how smaller NAEP samples in 2022 might have impacted the number of states reporting results. If you look at Figure 7 in the While Kentucky’s education system was sleeping… report, you will see that a total of 32 states plus the District of Columbia schools had scores for Black students in both 1992 and 2019. However, as you will see above, in 2022 one fewer state had black scores listed. Could low sample sizes have made West Virginia’s sampling errors too large for scores to be reported for its Black students? That’s an unfortunate loss of detail.
In any event, in 1992, with West Virginia eliminated, Kentucky ranked 2nd for Black Grade 4 NAEP Math results. By 2019, with West Virginia eliminated, Kentucky ranked 20th. Then, in 2022 Kentucky’s Black student performance fell even more to 24th place. This isn’t a middle of the pack performance and it looks even worse than in 2019.
Figure 7
Among the 29 states that had scores reported for Blacks in NAEP both 1998 and 2022, Kentucky’s rank slid from 12th to 21st. That’s not much different from the picture in the While Kentucky’s education system was sleeping… report.
Figure 8
This appears to be another case where smaller 2022 NAEP samples resulted in some states not getting scores reported for Black students. A total of 32 states, ignoring DC schools, had scores for Black students reported in both 1992 and 2019. That slid back to only 30 states reporting Black scores in both 1992 and 2022 for our new analysis. So, those smaller NAEP samples in 2022 might have had some real impacts on availability of results.
In any event, per Figure 9 in the While Kentucky’s education system was sleeping… report, 32 states plus the District of Columbia schools had Grade 8 Math scores reported for their Black students in both 1992 and 2019. Ignoring DC schools, Kentucky ranked 14th in 1992 and 21st in 2019. Per Figure 8 above, considering only states that had scores for both 1992 and 2022, Kentucky’s rank slid from 12th to 20th place. Basically, the picture didn’t change very much, and the state still ranks well below the middle as of 2022 for NAEP Grade 8 Math for its Black students.
Where’s the bang for the buck?
The data presented above is especially troubling given the massive infusion of money and emphasis on education in Kentucky that took place after 1990.
Back in 1988-90, the year before KERA was enacted, the total of education expenditures in Kentucky reported by the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) was $2,183,707,206.60. According to the very neat Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator, in 2021 dollars, that would be $4,567,393,820.
In its latest audited Revenues and Expenditures Report for 2020-21, KDE reports the total of Kentucky’s education expenditures was $9,793,823,728.
Even after adjusting for inflation, the state’s 2020-21 education spending was $5,226,429,908 higher than in 1990. Looked at another way, after allowing for inflation, the 2020-21 spending was 214% of what it was back in 1990.
The question that begs to be asked is whether or not Kentucky’s education performance today is double what it was back in 1990. Clearly, it isn’t.
Summing up
As is usually the case with education data, things changed a bit for Kentucky between the 2019 and 2022 NAEP; but overall, the state remains well below the middle of the pack in national comparisons over time. The lone exception in 2022 is for NAEP Grade 4 Reading for Black students, but possible sampling issues cloud that picture.
And Dr. Kings’ dream remains unfulfilled.