Our blacks certainly are not seeing it

It seems like every time we turn around, someone from Kentucky’s education complex is telling us “We’ve made a lot of progress here in Kentucky” in education.

Well, I am sorry, but that just isn’t what I see in the data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). I just updated some of the numbers, and especially for Kentucky’s major minority population, claiming the state has “made a lot of progress” seems like a cruel deception.

Figure 1 shows the earliest and latest available scores for Kentucky’s black students from the NAEP Grade 4 and Grade 8 reading and math assessments.

Figure 1

The first thing you will note is that there is plenty of “white space” above the latest, 2015 proficiency rates. How can you talk about “a lot of progress” when, as of the latest 2015 NAEP results, Kentucky’s blacks are reporting proficiency rates only around 23 percent and lower?

The truth is that Kentucky has made limited progress over the quarter of a century since the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990 was enacted. However, the rate of improvement has been very slow and our black students have a very, very long way to go before they see the kinds of proficiency rates they need.

How long will it take?

Check this table, which is derived from data in Figure 1. This shows the projected time for Kentucky’s black students to reach an 80 percent proficiency rate on the NAEP’s tests.

Table 1

As you can see, based on Kentucky’s actual, demonstrated progress, it will take the Bluegrass State’s black students 87 years to reach an 80 percent proficiency level on the NAEP Grade 4 Reading Assessment and an astonishing 277 years before our black eighth graders to do the same in reading!

Math doesn’t look much better. Kentucky’s black fourth graders will need 81 more years to reach an 80 percent proficiency rate in NAEP math. For the eighth grade blacks, we are looking at 170 more years to reach that proficiency level!

Now you can better understand why – after more than a quarter of a century of promises from our traditional public school system about improving performance of the state’s minority students – it is way past time for Kentucky to look to other education options. Viable options include school choice with charter schools and even tuition tax credit approaches to make good on a 25+ year promise that has not come true for our minority citizens.

Things look a bit better when we look at how Kentucky’s “all student” NAEP scores have trended. However, even here we see the state’s rate of progress is painfully slow, and claims of a lot of progress just don’t hold up.

Figure 2 shows how “all student” NAEP scores have trended in Kentucky from the earliest to most recent test years.

Figure 2

Even in Figure 2, there is an awful lot of “white space” above the latest NAEP scores. Once again, it’s clear that promises made 25+ years ago have not been kept.

How long will it take for average scores for all Kentucky students to reach an 80 percent level?

Table 2 has those answers.

Table 2

As you can see, we might make an 80 percent proficiency rate in elementary level math on NAEP by 2049. I probably won’t be alive to see that. And, when we talk about reading for Grade 8, absent someone discovering the fountain of youth, none of us alive today will see that happen, either.

So, let’s get this clear.

Kentucky’s public education system has made a little progress since KERA was enacted in 1990. But, the amount of progress is not impressive and the real NAEP story is that those who try to tell us otherwise are either seriously uninformed or are purposely trying to mislead us. Neither is acceptable.

Even worse, given that a quarter of a century of expensive education reform is now gone, Kentucky public education’s rate of progress is so slow that we won’t see reasonably good proficiency rates for many years yet to come.

By the way, I chose 80 percent as a target proficiency figure because the state has generally been reporting that about 12 to 15 percent or so of our students have learning disabilities. I don’t think it is reasonable to expect these kids, as a group, to score proficient on the NAEP. Shooting for an 80 percent proficiency rate allows a buffer for those learning disabled students.

Tech Notes:

NAEP scores were assembled from the Main NAEP Data Explorer on October 26, 2016.Calculations of the years to reach 80 percent proficiency were made as follows (using the black Grade 4 reading results as an example):Between 1992 and 2015 black Grade 4 NAEP Reading proficiency rates in Kentucky rose from eight percent to 23 percent. That works out to a proficiency rate rise of 15 points over those 23 years, or an annual rate of rise of 0.652 point per year.

Given that the 2015 black NAEP proficiency rate for Kentucky was 23 percent, Kentucky’s blacks have 57 more proficiency percentage points to go before they reach an 80 percent proficiency rate.

Dividing those 57 proficiency points by the demonstrated annual rate of improvement of 0.652 point per year shows it will take 87 more years, if this rate of improvement remains unchanged, before Kentucky’s blacks will reach a level of 80 percent proficiency on NAEP Grade 4 reading.

Note: The data reported in this blog are updated information from that provided in earlier blogs and Bluegrass Institute presentations and include minor changes in the all student projection for Grade 8 Reading and black projection for Grade 4 reading.