The results from the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress have been released, and it’s a “Gray Day” for Kentucky.

The NAEP changed its reporting formats dramatically this year, which is giving yours truly and at least one reporter fits as we try to find important information. I did locate one map generator in the new web site, however, and it allowed me to generate the maps below for state progress on NAEP in mathematics in the fourth and eighth grade. I’ll talk about the reading maps in a later post.

This first map shows which states made progress on Grade 4 NAEP Math between 2011 and 2013. Kentucky’s gray shading shows our fourth grade students made no statistically detectable progress in that two-year interval.

Let’s compare this to the new KPREP results (found in the 2012 and 2013 Unbridled Learning State Report Cards web site. First, set the year in the home page and then click on the “State Report Card” section. Next, click on the link that says “Printer Friendly Report Card (PDF)” to access the report cards).The Report Cards show that between 2012 and 2013 the KPREP fourth grade math proficiency rate rose from 39.6 percent to 43.9 percent, a rise of 4.3 points. “Summary Data Tables” Excel spreadsheets available in the new NAEP release from this page show Kentucky’s Grade 4 NAEP Math proficiency increased from 39 to 41 Percent. So, we may be starting to see a little grading inflation creeping in to the KPREP fourth grade scores, though the differences are pretty small at this point and the picture could change in another two years.

Now, here is the new eighth grade NAEP math map.

Again, it’s a gray day for the Bluegrass State. No significant change in performance is reported for Kentucky on Grade 8 NAEP Math between 2011 and 2013.

However, things get more problematic when we look at the KPREP situation. The NAEP Excel spreadsheet for math says Kentucky’s eighth grade NAEP proficiency rate actually slid insignificantly from 31 percent to 30 percent.

In notable contrast, between 2012 and 2013 KPREP tells us eighth grade math proficiency in Kentucky changed from 41.6 percent to 45.1 percent, a rise of 3.5 points that definitely is not reflected in the NAEP.

Even worse, the discrepancy in proficiency rates between NAEP and KPREP for eighth grade math is now over 15 points. That is highly problematic and indicates KPREP eighth grade mathematics scoring is not only too liberal, but it also has gotten even more liberal over the two years that KPREP has been around.