New Kentucky school test results are out – First 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.

In this first table, I present the scores for all students by school level in Kentucky.

For example, at the top of the table you can see that in reading, 54.6% of the state’s elementary school students scored Proficient or more in the 2017-18 school year and that increased to a 56.4% proficiency rate in 2018-19. The improvement was equal to 1.8 percentage points, and as a positive development that change is color-coded in light green.

The good news in reading doesn’t last, however. In both the middle and high school level testing, reading performance fell slightly between 2017-18 and 2018-19, and those small changes get a pink color-code.

Reading through the rest of the table, it soon becomes apparent that green coding isn’t very prevalent. In fact, out of the 14 different score changes reported, 9 (64%) show either flat or declining results. In the case of middle school writing, the decline was rather severe, earning a more dramatic color code.

Certainly, the message in this first, rather simple look at Kentucky’s assessment results for 2019 indicate that tumult in the classroom might indeed not be a real benefit to students. The story in the table for math, reading and writing in the upper grades also provides further evidence that the Common Core State Standards for these subjects seem not to have done Kentucky any favors.

Next up will be a look at the statewide trends for ACT performance against the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education’s Benchmark Scores that allow matriculating students to avoid taking remedial classes in the related subjects. Spoiler Alert: That won’t look pretty, either.

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