The 2016-17 Kentucky School Report Cards were released early today, and my first impression is that the results don’t look good.To begin, here is a quick overview of the trend in combined math and reading proficiency rate results by school level based on target goals and actual proficiency rates achieved.

On this table, the baseline scores are an average of the proficiency rates for the 2011-2012, 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 school years, as computed by the Kentucky Department of Education.

The Delivery Target scores are computed by the Kentucky Department of Education with the intention that the state would at least meet these scores for the given year to be considered to have made adequate annual progress.

The Actual Score data in this table come from the Kentucky Performance Rating for Educational Progress (K-PREP) test results for elementary and middle schools and K-PREP End-of-Course Tests for high schools.

As you can see, the state failed to make any target in any listed year, including the new 2016-17 year.

But, the picture is much worse than that for elementary and high schools. For both of these school levels the overall state proficiency rate for reading and math combined dropped between 2015-16 and 2016-17. In fact, the high school combined math and reading average is lower than the average posted two years ago, as well.

Given that this is Kentucky’s sixth set of scores since it started Common Core State Standards-aligned KPREP testing in 2011-12, this isn’t a happy message for the dwindling fans of Common Core.

My very quick look at the state report indicates a lot more problems when we examine things like college and/or career readiness (looks like the lowest rate in the past three years) and scores for minority students (African-American high school science proficiency is only 18.4 percent this year, below the rate in 2014-15), so stay tuned. I think a lot of individual schools are getting some pretty sobering news.

By the way, there are no Unbridled Learning school accountability ratings this year. That assessment program wore out its credibility and has been cancelled. The state’s new accountability system isn’t going to be on line for at least another year.

Technical note:

Scores come from the 2016-17 Kentucky School Report Card for the state. The table is extracted from the DELIVERY_TARGETS, PROFICIENCY_GAP tab.

One more point: if you go to this web page, you will see a model of how the new school report card will look in the future. I must caution you that this model DOES NOT display the actual scores for 2016-17 and seems to show considerably higher scores than were actually attained in this recently concluded school year.

Edited at 0820 28Sep17 to add location information for table in School Report Card.