Kentucky Department of Education predicts large drops in state test scores

Kentucky School Test Scores Dropping Graphic

The chickens will soon come home to roost for Kentucky’s state assessment program, substantiating years of Bluegrass Institute research and comments.

We’ve consistently shown you evidence over the years that the scores from the Kentucky Core Content Tests (KCCT) used for CATS accountability were seriously overstating the real performance of the state’s public school students.

Our comments now are confirmed by – of all people – the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE).In a preliminary study released on Friday, the KDE predicts substantial drops in proficiency rates in mathematics and reading when the state’s new Kentucky Performance Rating for Educational Progress (K-PREP) scores are released (scheduled for October).The reason is that – unlike CATS testing, which was never aligned to any standard we could understand – the K-PREP is aligned to what students need to learn to be successful in college and careers. That means the K-PREP is much more rigorous than the KCCT, which we always thought was established mostly to make Kentuckians feel good about their school system regardless of real student performance.

In any event, we were right. Big score drops are coming.

To get an idea of how large the score drops might be, click the “Read more” link below.Here is a summary of the anticipated score declines, listed by school level, from a Kentucky School Boards Association news release analyzing the new KDE report.

Reading Proficiency:

Elementary: 76 percent in 2011, could fall 36 percent

Middle: 70 percent, may decline by 30 percent

High: 65 percent, could drop by 25 percent

Math Proficiency:

Elementary: 73 percent, may fall 37 percent

Middle: 65 percent, down possibly 29 percent

High: 46 percent, could decline 10 percent

We won’t know the exact amounts of the changes until the K-PREP scores from 2012 are released. However, the estimates above compare reasonably well with other comparisons we can make for ourselves using publicly available 2011 Benchmark performance for 11th grade ACT testing in reading and math and 2011 Kentucky Core Content Test scores for high school students in the same subjects.

No matter how you analyze this, if the K-PREP is really aimed at college and career preparation, the state’s test scores will have to drop dramatically. This is no secret. We’ve been pointing this out for years.

Now, here’s the problem: First with our KIRIS assessments and later with CATS, a lot of people in the education community constantly told us how great those assessments were and that we could have confidence in them.

That was not true. Those assessments were not great.

Kentucky’s education professionals and their partners owed the state’s citizens a lot more accurate information, a lot sooner, about the problems with their testing programs.

Credibility has now been sorely tested.

As the new test results come out, I anticipate some hard questions about why our old assessments were so strongly defended for so long when they were clearly so highly inflated.

I’d advise both KDE and one of its ‘partners’ use less spin – and a whole lot more precision – in their answers. I hope I don’t see anything more like the recent example of KDE gushing over a problematic report without even discussing possible shortcomings and limitations in that study’s methodology.