NAEP First Look – KY White 8th Graders continue to score very low in math
My first foray into the 2017 NAEP results is for Kentucky’s historic worst performance area – Grade 8 Math.
Grade 8 Math Whites Map for All States
This comparison map, generated with the new NAEP Data Explorer web tool shows the state’s white eighth graders were outscored by a statistically significant amount by white eighth graders in almost all the states in the nation plus the District of Columbia’s schools.
Kentucky’s white eighth graders scored statistically significantly below the national average and only outscored white students in just two other states, Alabama and West Virginia. Note: the “DS” circle is for DOD Schools System, which I did not select for comparison.
G8 Math Map for Whites 2015
The NAEP Data Explorer also shows that Kentucky’s NAEP Grade 8 Math scale score for white students only changed from 281 in 2015 to 282 in 2017, a change well below the level of statistical significance which signals no detectable improvement occurred.
The 2017 map shows essentially the same situation we saw in the 2015 NAEP, as this map generated with the old version of the NAEP Data Explorer for Grade 8 NAEP math for white students shows.
Bottom line, after more years of use of Common Core State Standards for math than any other state, Kentucky continues to have major problems teaching math to its largest-by-far racial group.
Of course, don’t forget the validity of the state-to-state results for 2017 is in some question. Could the change to digital testing have impacted the comparability of scores? We might not know the real answer to that question for some time.