The Kentucky Board of Education (KBE) was heavily engaged in discussions about the state’s new school accountability system today, and one slide, shown in Figure 1, which didn’t make anyone happy, is shown below.

Figure 1

This slide shows actual average math scores from Kentucky KPREP testing in 2014 (blue bars) and 2016 (red bars) along with projected scores for 2018 (green bars) and a full school generation of kids out in 2030. Each section of the graph covers a different group of students:

ALL = All Students

W = White Students Only

AA = African-American Students Only

FR = Free or Reduced Cost School Lunch Eligible Students Only

SWD-IEP = Students with Learning Disabilities Who Have an Individual Education Plan

As you can see, even for the highest performing group, the white students, even 13 years from now the Kentucky Department of Education projects only 73 percent will be proficient. That would be an increase of 24 points from the 49 percent that KDE says were actually proficient in 2014. That works out to a proficiency rate growth rate of 1.8 points per year.

For African-American students, fewer that one in two, just 46 percent, will be proficient in 2030. In 2014, 30 percent were proficient, for a growth rate of only 1.2 points per year

Of course, this is based on Kentucky’s somewhat unproved KPREP test results. For an even more disturbing look at the state’s slow rate of progress, click the “Read more” link.

Some time ago, I provided readers another set of proficiency rate projections based on Kentucky’s extensive performance data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Figure 2 covers the “all student” projections.

Figure 2

As you can see from the information covering Grade 4 and Grade 8 math, it will take somewhere between 34 to 72 more years for Kentucky to show an 80 percent proficiency rate on NAEP math. That is considerably longer than the implications in Figure 1.For the fourth graders, the proficiency rate growth from 1992 to 2015 of only 27 points in this 23 year period works out to a growth rate of only 1.2 points per year. For the eighth graders, the 18-point change in proficiency between 1990 and 2015 works out to an even smaller, 0.7 point per year growth rate.

Figure 3 shows a similar slide, but this time only African-American (black) Kentucky students are considered.

Figure 3

Here we are talking some really serious time needed, based on Kentucky’s historic performance over a quarter of a century on the highly respected NAEP, for the state’s African-Americans to reach an 80 percent proficiency rate.

The fourth grade black rate of growth from 1992 to 2015 was only 0.7 point per year. For the eighth graders, it was only 0.4 points per year.

The bottom line here is the projections for the KPREP results the state board received today are considerably more optimistic than the NAEP indicates.

Of course, no board members seemed happy with the picture in Figure 1, either.

Tech Stuff

Figure 1 comes from KDE’s Power Point for the board today.

NAEP data used to create Figures 2 and 3 were obtained from the NAEP Data Explorer.