Kentucky’s real progress (?) on the National Assessment of Educational Progress – Obviously needed update Part 2
As mentioned in the first blog in this series, I had a chance to participate on August 13, 2018 on KET’s Kentucky Tonight program on education, and it was an interesting time.
Three minutes into the broadcast, show guest Dr. Steven Gordon mentioned that in a new report he co-authored with BIPPS Scholar Dr. John Garen that they found test score gains in Kentucky had only been modest at best on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). This got questioned at 5 minutes 30 seconds into the broadcast by Brigit Ramsey of the Prichard Committee, who said Kentucky had been at the bottom on education indicators in the 1980s and that our state has now risen to the middle of the pack on things like NAEP.
Well, not really.
My earlier blog talked about comparisons with other states over time, but I also think we should look at how Kentucky compares against itself over time.
Figure 1 information, derived from data in the NAEP Data Explorer web tool, shows how our state trended between 2015 and 2017.
Figure 1
Changes on NAEP for All Studs and Blacks in Kentucky, 2015 to 2017
As you can see, the NAEP’s best estimates for proficiency rates in Kentucky on Grades 4 and 8 reading and math mostly went negative or stayed flat. The only improvements, and only by one percentage point in each case, was for the all student average score in Grade 8 Math and for blacks in Grade 8 reading. The rest of the changes all are highlighted in red because they stayed flat or went in the wrong direction.
In fairness, none of the changes are large enough for the NAEP to declare them statistically significant, but with so many results trending in the wrong direction, there is cause for concern even if from a statistical viewpoint the scores all stayed flat. After all, with things like black Grade 8 NAEP Math proficiency running only around 9 to 12 percent, who can be satisfied with flat performance over time?
This, after 27 years of KERA reforms and about five years of Common Core based curriculum in the state’s classrooms is not happy news.
Figure 2 shows the All Student NAEP results for Kentucky public schools from the earliest available testing year along with the latest, 2017 test data. I used this data to calculate an annual rate of improvement in the scores and then projected how many more years will be needed before we see NAEP proficiency rates of 80 percent in each subject. You can find those years to 80 percent proficiency projections in the inset table in Figure 2.Unless something dramatic happens to change the historical trends to date, most of us will be long gone before those proficiency rates happen in Kentucky in reading and Grade 8 Math.
Figure 2
Kentucky's NAEP Progress Oldest to 2017 All Students
By the way, back in March 2017 I did a blog about “Kentucky’s Real Progress on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).” Figure 1 in that earlier blog looks a lot like Figure 2 above, but the end year is 2015 instead of 2017. If you compare the inset table in Figure 2 above to the inset table in Figure 1 in that older blog, you will more disturbing problems.
The projected number of added years before our students will reach an 80 percent proficiency rate increased for every area but Grade 8 math, where the projection remains at 72 more years. In the case of Grade 8 reading, the projected time is up sharply from the already very bad 2015 estimate of 126 years.
Things look much worse when we examine similar data for Kentucky’s black students, shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3
Kentucky's NAEP Progress Oldest to 2017 Black Students
Not only are the most recent proficiency rates appalling, but the rate of progress is so miniscule that it essentially really doesn’t exist at all. In no case are we within a century of seeing performance approaching 80 percent proficiency based on the state’s historic trends for blacks on NAEP. That’s just not acceptable.