Why Kentucky Needs School Choice – Our black students can’t stand the traditional public schools’ slow rates of progress
It’s National School Choice Week, and there are many telling reasons why Kentucky needs to expand school choice options for all students. However, the case is especially critical when we consider what is happening to the state’s largest racial minority, its black students.
Comparisons of the earliest and most recent data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that the Bluegrass State’s black students are making only very, very slow progress over time. In some cases it will literally take centuries before the Bluegrass State can expect to see reasonably high rates of academic proficiency for its children of color based on demonstrated history with the NAEP. Even in the subject showing the most progress, NAEP Grade 4 Math, we can’t expect to see an 80 percent proficiency rate for Kentucky’s Black students before the year 2096. Very few of us will be alive that long.
We hear Kentucky’s traditional public school boosters claim the state has made all sorts of educational progress, but after examining the dismal NAEP results for Kentucky’s black students as of the latest, 2015 NAEP, it is very sad that anyone would try to gloss over and ignore these devastating facts of life.
How can any reasonable person be willing to overlook the fact that in 2015, after a quarter of a century of KERA reforms, only 12 percent of Kentucky’s black eighth grade students meets muster on NAEP math or that only 15 percent of the state’s black eight graders read proficiently?
A number of reports on charter schools, including a bunch from the CREDO research unit at Stanford University, now say that charter schools do notably better for minority students than traditional public schools. Looking at the graphic above, it is clearly well past time for Kentucky to start giving its students of color a better education break. NAEP makes it astonishingly clear that Kentucky needs school choice.
Scores come from the NAEP Data Explorer
Estimates of the time to reach 80 percent proficiency rates are based on the changes in scores over the years listed in the graphic.