The history of white minus Black achievement gaps in Kentucky is unacceptable – Grade 4 Math

Kentucky’s achievement gaps picture for Grade 4 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Math is even worse than the reading situation.

The 2022 NAEP Grade 4 math white minus Black proficiency rate gap of 27 points is statistically significantly larger than the gaps for 2005 and earlier. That’s a bad history after three decades of education reform in the Bluegrass State, which among many things, promised to raise performance of all students.

After allowing for the statistical sampling errors in the NAEP scores, Black Grade 4 math scores have been essentially flat since 2003. They actually are not statistically significantly different from the score way back in 1992, either.

White scores recently went backwards and the state’s 2022 math performance for white fourth graders is no better than in 2007.

So, here’s another 3-decades long education history lesson, and it isn’t a pretty story for Kentucky’s Black students.

Meanwhile, as we showed in Monday’s blog earlier this week, it doesn’t have to be like this. Other states that allow Black students more choices about where to go to school are starting to see some really interesting results. For example, Black students in charter schools in Georgia now score as well in Grade 4 NAEP Reading as Kentucky’s white students. That gap is gone.

Maybe, if Kentucky finally allows real school choice, its Black students will benefit, as well.

 Data to assemble the graph came from the NAEP Data Explorer.