Kentucky’s education performance screams for change though myths of better performance continue – The Story for Black Students

Several days ago, I posted the first part of this series, Kentucky’s education performance screams for change though myths of better performance continue, which focused on white student scores to show claims of great progress for Kentucky’s public education system compared to other states are seriously in error. Now, let’s look at the even more unhappy picture painted by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) about what happened to our Black students after KERA and its trappings, including School Based Decision Making (SBDM), took hold of Kentucky’s classrooms.

Figure 1 shows how Black students in Kentucky’s scores on NAEP Grade 4 Reading

Figure 1

The year 1992 was first time a State NAEP in Grade 4 Reading was conducted. A total of 32 states plus the District of Columbia’s school system (or 33 jurisdictions) had Black student scores reported both in 1992 and in 2019, the most recent testing available.

In 1992 Kentucky’s Black students’ NAEP Scale Score is listed in the 13th place by the NAEP Data Explorer. Believe it or not in 1992 NAEP testing only one state had a Black student Scale Score statistically significantly higher than Kentucky’s while Kentucky scored statistically significantly higher than four states.

That got largely turned around by 2019. In the most recent testing, the NAEP Data Explorer shows Kentucky’s score in 23rd place, about a third of the way from the bottom and well below the middle. Now seven states statistically significantly outscore for Black results and Kentucky only does better than one state by a statistically significant amount.

Not only are the 2019 results not middle of the pack, but in NAEP Grade 4 Reading Kentucky’s Black students clearly lost notable ground between the early days of KERA and the most recent data point.

Now, let’s examine the situation for NAEP Grade 4 Math for Black students, which is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2

The picture here is even worse than the Grade 4 reading situation. Kentucky’s Blacks ranked at the top against their peers in other states for NAEP Grade 4 Math in 19092 (bet that’s a surprise). No state scored statistically significantly higher and 11 scored statistically significantly worse.

By 2019, things were flip-flopped, unfortunately. Kentucky is again below the middle of the pack and the state’s Black students only statistically significantly outscore five states and are now outscored by six states, another clear decline in relative performance since KERA began.

The earliest administration of State NAEP Grade 8 Reading was in 1998, and KERA was already having impacts by that time. Figure 3 shows what happened for this grade and subject. 

Figure 3

Back in 1992 Kentucky’s Blacks still scored above the middle of the pack and no state had a statistically significantly higher score.

By 2019, Kentucky’s Black Grade 8 students dropped to only about a third off the bottom of the stack and now four states score statistically significantly higher while no state scores statistically significantly lower. This isn’t middle of the pack performance, and it is definitely decay for Kentucky’s Black students.

Finally, Figure 4 shows Kentucky’s Black student performance for NAEP Grade 8 Math. 

Figure 4

The picture, as you can easily see, is a replication of the earlier ones in Figures 1 to 3.

Perhaps most notable, back in 1990, the first time NAEP Grade 8 Math reported state-level results, Kentucky outscored Black students in eight other states that have scores for both 1990 and 2019. By 2019, no state scores statistically significantly lower than the Bluegrass State for Black students on the NAEP Grade 8 Math Assessment. Not one.

This disturbingly decay in Kentucky’s Black students’ performance needs to be kept in mind as Kentucky’s legislators try to develop better education programs in the state. Many of those legislators have been working under the false assumption that Kentucky used to score at the bottom among the states and has worked its way up to performing at the middle of the pack. That is absolutely not the case, as the NAEP analyses above and in the earlier blog about white student performance show.

By the way, there weren’t enough Hispanic students in Kentucky in the early days of State NAEP for scores to be reported for them. So, we cannot show you how that might look.

To close, should Kentucky continue on with SBDM management unchanged and without the kinds of school choice that are found in many of the states that have moved ahead of Kentucky for Black student results? Is maintaining largely a status quo here the right thing to do four our children? Legislators, the ball is in your court. For the sake of our children, please don’t fumble it.