K-PREP elementary school reading

We’ve been writing about the new Kentucky Performance Report for Educational Progress (K-PREP) test results and the Unbridled Learning school accountability scores. People are asking, “What do these new test scores show? Is the new program really more rigorous? Is it rigorous enough?

Our first blogs looked at K-PREP middle school data. We found that while the new K-PREP middle school tests in math and reading are more rigorous than the old CATS assessments, the new tests still may not be rigorous enough, with the picture looking somewhat better for reading than math. It is also obvious that the K-PREP middle school science and social studies tests are just warmed over versions of the old CATS assessments, with science including the same inflated scoring compared to scores from more credible tests like the NAEP and the EXPLORE.

In sharp contrast, the elementary school K-PREP math scoring, at least at the fourth grade level, appears to be well aligned to the NAEP fourth grade math standards. Sadly, we now will see that good news does not hold for reading.

Unlike the elementary school math K-PREP, the K-PREP reading assessment at the fourth grade level returned a notably higher reading proficiency rate than Kentucky’s proficiency rate from the latest NAEP fourth grade reading assessment.

Thus, while the K-PREP elementary school reading standards appear tighter than those from the CATS KCCT, they still might not be rigorous enough.

This is an important discovery because the elementary school K-PREP tests are supposedly aligned to the national Common Core State Standards. Can it be those national standards for elementary school reading are also set to too low a level of rigor?

Once again, I must remind readers that all Kentucky reading results are inflated to an unknown degree because significant percentages of Kentucky’s students with learning disabilities have the reading assessments read to them. These special students only get a spoken word comprehension test, but the state reports their test results as though they are in every way comparable to results for other students who take Kentucky’s reading tests as true printed text decoding and comprehension exams.

Note: NAEP’s latest 4th grade science results for Kentucky are from 2009 and are somewhat dated compared to the 2012 K-PREP data. However, for those who are interested, in 2009 Kentucky’s NAEP Fourth Grade Science proficiency rate was 45 percent for all students. K-PREP reported a fourth grade science proficiency rate in 2012 of 68.8 percent, obviously much higher. In 2011, CATS KCCT reported a fourth grade science proficiency rate of 70.53 percent. There is thus an indication in this data that K-PREP elementary school science is currently just a warmed over CATS.

Data Sources:

NAEP Data Explorer, Accessed 30Oct12K-PREP Proficiency Rates – 2011-2012 Achievement State Grade report received by e-mail from KDE. Should be available on line soon.

CATS KCCT Scores – “2010-2011 Interim Performance Report, State,” Kentucky Department of Education, Frankfort, KY. May no longer be on line.