Kentucky’s education performance screams for change though myths of better performance continue
As crucial education bills work their way through the Kentucky legislature, I see people yet again claiming that the commonwealth’s education system used to rank at the bottom but now ranks around the middle among the states. The implication: All is well and major changes are not needed.
Well, let’s put that far-too-often-presented myth to bed.
Figure 1 shows how Kentucky’s white students performed on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in Grade 4 Reading the first time this was given at the state level in 1992 and again in 2019. I only show states that have scores reported for both years. The tables were directly assembled using the NAEP Data Explorer web tool, by the way. The tables in each figure are standard presentations available from that tool.
The NAEP Data Explorer provides a straight ranking based on test scores and, in a more statistically sound manner, shows states that scored statistically significantly higher, the same as, or statistically significantly lower than each other state.
Figure 1
As you can see in Figure 1, a total of 42 jurisdictions (41 states plus the District of Columbia schools) had results reported for both years. Back in 1992, Kentucky ranked in 41st place. That hasn’t changed much as of 2019 when Kentucky ranked in 33rd place. Both rankings are clearly well below the middle.
When you look at the statistical significance data, in 1992 no state scored statistically significantly lower than Kentucky. By 2019 only one state scored statistically significantly lower. That might mostly be a factor of NAEP increasing its sample sizes over the years to reduce sampling errors. Regardless, that 2019 statistic doesn’t look like middle-of-the-stack performance.
Now let’s examine the Grade 4 Math NAEP. Figure 2 shows what the NAEP Data Explorer produced for that in 1992 and 2019.
Figure 2
Again, 42 jurisdictions have scores reported for white students in both years. In 1992, the first administration of State NAEP in Grade 4 Math, Kentucky’s whites ranked 41st. Flash forward to 2019 and Kentucky only moved up to 39th place. That isn’t anywhere near the middle, of course.
Looking at the statistical significance data, Kentucky only advanced between 1992 and 2019 from having no state scoring lower to now having just one state scoring significantly lower. Again, that isn’t close to middle of the stack and the tiny change might mostly be due to sample size growth.
On to Grade 8 Reading, shown in Figure 3
Figure 3
Note that State NAEP Grade 8 Reading didn’t start until 1998. In that year, Kentucky ranked 28th out of the 36 jurisdictions that reported white student scores in that year and also in 2019.
Now, flash forward to 2019. Kentucky’s white Grade 8 students have gone backwards in reading. Clearly, placing only 32nd out of 36 jurisdictions as of 2019 isn’t middle of the stack. Moving in the wrong direction for ranking makes it even worse.
Oddly, Kentucky didn’t outscore any state by a statistically significant amount in 1998 and did outscore two states in 2019, but that still is bottom tier and this tiny change is possibly due to better sampling by the NAEP.
Finally, we look at NAEP Grade 8 Math performance, shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4
Way back in 1990, the first time any state NAEP was given, Kentucky’s ranking for Grade 8 Math was a bottom tier 35th place out of 37 jurisdictions with scores. In 2019, the state placed exactly the same. No progress, and still quite bottom tier.
Looking at the statistical information, Kentucky did outscore one state in 2019 by a statistically significant amount, up just one from the performance nearly three decades earlier, but that’s all.
WHY THE FOCUS ON WHITE SCORES?
That is a good question, and I have a good answer. To begin, the facts are that student demographics now vary dramatically across the states. Figure 5 shows the racial breakdown of the students in some selected jurisdictions in the 2019 Grade 4 NAEP Reading Assessment as an example.
Figure 5
Something really stands out in this graph. Whites in Kentucky are by far the largest percentage of its total enrollment compared to white student percentages in any other jurisdiction shown. That includes having 29 points higher white enrollment than the national public school average and a percentage more than 30 points higher than the white percentages in both Florida and Mississippi, two state’s I’ve written about a lot over the past few years.
Thanks to the achievement gaps, which are present everywhere across the nation, comparing whites – even Kentucky’s whites – to students of color elsewhere is just misleading and creates a false picture of performance.
This isn’t news. Past NAEP report cards discuss the necessity to analyze NAEP scores across states using more than just overall average scores. There was extra space afforded to the discussion of this issue on Page 32 in the NAEP 2009 Science Report Card where results from Kentucky offer a featured example of how the picture can change when you break NAEP out by race.
Maybe those folks pushing the “Kentucky education now ranks in the middle” myth never read those NAEP reports – or maybe they’re just trying to mislead us with a smoke screen. Regardless, the truth is that the Bluegrass State’s education system is not performing well, and those standing in the way of change increasingly start to look like a major part of the problem — a badly misinformed part of the problem, at best.