Let’s finish out our Black History Month examination of Kentucky’s white minus Black achievement gaps by checking the picture for Grade 8 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Math. That picture up to 2022 provides still more disappointment.

To begin, Kentucky’s white students’ scores in NAEP Grade 8 Math have been on a roller coaster, including the notable drop in white NAEP Grade 8 Math proficiency in 2022 from the rate in 2019. That led to the white minus Black achievement gap statistically significantly falling from 23 points in 2017 to just 15 points in 2022.

But, before any cheering starts, the 2022 gap isn’t statistically significantly different from any other earlier gap all the way back to 1992.

Also, the gap reduction in 2022 is only due to the notable decay in white performance. That’s not the way we want to reduce gaps.

The Black students’ proficiency rate of just 9 points in 2022 is a real embarrassment. After allowing for the statistical sampling errors in NAEP scores, Kentucky’s Black 2022 NAEP Grade 8 Math proficiency rate isn’t any different from rates way back to 1992.

Essentially, the NAEP can report no discernable improvement in Kentucky’s Black students’ math proficiency all the way back to the beginning of KERA. That’s three decades of no progress.

This concludes our 3-decades long Kentucky education history lesson. In particular, it isn’t a pretty story for Kentucky’s Black students.

If you would like a nice, printable handout with all four of the NAEP gap results we’ve covered, just click here. It’s not a happy history, but it’s the real history. Maybe, if Kentucky gets real school choice options for students, this white minus Black achievement gap picture will start to change, just as it already has in places like Georgia.