New test results raise questions about claims of progress

Yesterday the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) released the testing results from the fall for the PLAN and EXPLORE testing in Kentucky.

These two tests are coordinated at the grade appropriate level with the ACT college entrance test and use similar Benchmark Scores to show if students are on track to be successful in college and careers.

The EXPLORE is given to eighth grade students in Kentucky while our 10th graders take the PLAN.

Since I participated in a panel on charter schools in Louisville last night (more on that later), the first analysis I did on the new data focused on Kentucky’s largest school district. The table below shows what I found.

PLAN Math Benchmark for JeffCo and State 2011-12

Among Louisville’s 21 regular high schools (special alternative schools don’t get test results), the majority – 14 of them – had really disappointing results for PLAN mathematics performance. In these 14 schools (highlighted in pink) fewer than 20 percent of the students scored at or above the PLAN Math Benchmark Score.

That means the overwhelming majority of the students in those schools are not on track for college and careers.

In a real shock, six of the schools posted math benchmark performance in the single-digit category. Fewer than one in ten of the students in those schools are on track to survive the first college math course they would take in a two- or four-year postsecondary school.

District wide, Jefferson County’s 10th grade students scored below the statewide math benchmark, as well.

Statewide, the new PLAN 2011-2012 Profile Summary Report shows that our students scored well below the national norm PLAN score for mathematics set in 2010, leaving Jefferson County even farther behind that national norm.

Clearly, a lot more needs to happen for kids in math, both statewide and in the state’s largest school system. PLAN makes that very clear.

And, as I recently pointed out here and here, the relative performance improvement in charter schools versus non-charter schools for math make these schools of choice and innovation look even more attractive for Kentucky.