Bluegrass Institute report raises strong concerns about continued achievement gaps and graduation failures in Jefferson County

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For Immediate Release: Monday, Feb. 29, 2016

(LOUISVILLE, Ky.) – Legislators and educators made a promise more than a quarter-century ago when the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) was passed: In return for vastly increased education spending, the Bluegrass State was going to do a much better job of educating its students – especially the commonwealth’s racial minorities.

However, a new Bluegrass Institute report, “Blacks Continue Falling Through Gaps in Louisville’s Schools: The 2016 Update,” is available at www.bipps.org and provides highly unsettling evidence that the promise has not been kept.

“This is one of the most disturbing reports on Kentucky’s educational performance that the Bluegrass Institute has ever released,” Bluegrass Institute president Jim Waters said at a news conference today in front of the Jefferson County Public Schools’ central offices at the VanHoose Education Center, 3332 Newburg Road.

Report author and Bluegrass Institute staff education analyst Richard Innes in the 2016 update finds notable declines in scores for Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) blacks on both eighth-grade EXPLORE and the 10th-grade PLAN. White-minus-black achievement gaps widened in all subject areas between the 2011-12 and 2014-15 school years and the percentages of blacks meeting EXPLORE’s readiness benchmark scores are lower now, as well. PLAN results are nearly as dismal.

While small improvements have occurred in some areas of the Kentucky Performance Rating for Educational Progress (K-PREP) math testing, the new report finds 2015 white-minus-black math-achievement gaps exceed 10 percentage points in 116 out of total of 134 JCPS schools that reported full data. Worst of all, data released by the Kentucky Department of Education show that the academic-achievement gaps at Dunn Elementary and Noe Middle schools exceed an astonishing 50 percentage points.

There also is a geographic pattern to JCPS’ academic-achievement gap with the largest disparity in math found in the more-affluent sections on Louisville’s East Side.

The report also answers another mystery: why a number of Louisville high schools officially report notably higher graduation rates for blacks instead of whites. Using a new analysis technique developed by Innes, it appears the reason for this unexpected reverse achievement gap in graduation rates is due to an extreme and unbalanced amount of social promotion to a high-school diploma in Louisville’s schools.

Innes finds a 20-point difference in the reported high school graduation rates for whites and the number of white ninth-grade students who graduate four years later ready for either college or a career. For blacks, however, the differential is an astonishingly high 42.2 points – indicating many black high-school graduates in Jefferson County are getting hollow pieces of paper.

“Burdened taxpayers and concerned parents want to know what the district’s plan is for closing these unacceptable gaps and ensuring that the promise of KERA is kept: that all students, no matter the color of their skin, socioeconomic status or zip code, can achieve and succeed at the highest levels,” Waters said. “Plus, it’s not unreasonable to expect a school district with a $1.4 billion budget to come up with some ideas other than simply throwing more of taxpayers’ hard-earned money at the problem.”

The Bluegrass Institute is Kentucky’s first and only free-market think tank and is dedicated to advancing sound public-policy solutions based on credible data and its principles of individual liberty, economic prosperity and limited – and transparent – government. For interview information, please contact report author Richard Innes at 859-466-8198 ordinnes@freedomkentucky.com.