New Kentucky school test results are out – First ACT Look

Kentucky has finally released the results from its school assessments for the 2018-2019 school term (many weeks after the next school term started), and we can now see what happened after a tumultuous year where standards still rather close to the Common Core remain and where more than a few teachers abandoned their students to protest in Frankfort on school days.

My first blog in this series looked at the KPREP scores and trends for the past two years. Now, I examine the percentage of all Kentucky high school 11th grade students who met the ACT Benchmark Scores set by the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE) that allows these students to avoid taking a college remedial course in the related subject areas.

This table shows the story.

As you can easily see, the tale isn’t pretty. In English, for example, 50.7% of the Kentucky 11th grade class in 2017-18 met or exceeded the CPE’s Benchmark Score. That dropped by 2.0 percentage points to only 48.7% who met muster in the most recent testing for the 11th grade class of 2018-19.

Likewise, performance dropped in reading and math, as well.

This isn’t a happy story for public education in Kentucky. But, this is what happens when teachers falsely claim they are sick and then head to Frankfort to protest while their students are just left to wonder why they should pay attention when teacher indicates he or she cannot do her job well.

This also isn’t a great story for Common Core, which was solidly in use in Kentucky by the 2011-12 school term, seven years before the 2018-19 11th graders took the ACT.

Data source is the Kentucky Department of Education’s School Report Card, Academic Performance area.