The recent news release about the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results from the Kentucky Department of Education omitted some of the early state data from this important program. That probably was done to keep the size of the tables manageable; however, omitting test results from 1996 and earlier creates a misconception about the real performance over time for Kentucky’s elementary school age African-American students on the NAEP math assessment.

This graph will help to set the true story in proper context.

Very simply, during the early days of NAEP state-level assessments in Grade 4 math, Kentucky’s African-American students scored notably better than their racial counterparts across the rest of the nation.

Sadly, as KERA started to take hold, that advantage quickly was lost, with Kentucky’s African-Americans performing their worst ever on NAEP in the year 2000, which just happens to be the year where the table in the department’s press release starts.

Since 2000, Kentucky’s African-American students have struggled back to parity with their peers elsewhere, but going back above the national average remains an illusive target.

So, despite the image created by the selection of data in the Kentucky Department of Education’s NAEP press release, the state’s African-American fourth graders have not come from behind. Relative to the national NAEP math averages, Kentucky’s fourth grade African-Americans are not close to where they were when KERA was just getting going.

One more point: in 2013 the fourth grade white NAEP national average math score was 250 and in Kentucky it was 244. Those scores are MUCH higher than our African-Americans scored.

So, even if African-Americans in Kentucky are meeting the national average for their counterparts in other states on the NAEP, that isn’t nearly good enough. No-one here should be satisfied.

Thus, with this added example, the new NAEP again shows our state needs more educational choices, particularly so for traditionally under-educated segments of our population.

There is another interesting story hidden in the department’s press release tables that cover math and reading scores for whites and blacks. Stay tuned for that, when I’ll explain how lower than average scores for both whites and blacks can result in higher than average scores overall (Yup! and this deals with real math, not some of that Common Core stuff we are hearing about).