(LOUISVILLE, Ky.) – A new report by the Bluegrass Institute, Kentucky’s free market think tank, reveals that the commonwealth’s largest school district continues to fail its black students.

An update to the institute’s “Blacks Falling Through Gaps” report from the Summer of 2012 shows dramatic proficiency rate gaps between black and white students continue to exist in many Jefferson County Public Schools.

The updated report – based on results from the new Kentucky Performance Rating for Educational Progress (K-PREP) tests – also reveals that the highest gaps still tend to be found in schools east of Interstate 65.Norton and Brandeis Elementary Schools both posted astonishingly large white-black math proficiency rate gaps of more than 51 percentage points. Kentucky’s new Unbridled Learning school accountability program rated both schools in the highest classification as “Schools of Distinction” while failing to identify their achievement-gap problems.

Large gaps also continue at Dunn Elementary School.

“Dunn has a very large K-PREP math achievement gap of nearly 49 percentage points, but Unbridled Learning provides no clue about the problem,” said Richard G. Innes, Bluegrass Institute staff education analyst and author of the new report. “Unbridled Learning tells Kentuckians that Dunn is a ‘Proficient’ school, which indicates this school performs better than at least 70 percent of all the schools in Kentucky.

“Dunn may perform for its whites, but blacks in this school didn’t even reach district wide black proficiency rate for Jefferson County schools and really got left behind.”

More details can be found in the report, which is available online at www.bipps.org.