What happened to Kentucky’s NAEP achievement gaps for math?

The 2022 testing results from the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress are out, and the results, as expected, are lower in many cases, but in some cases the sampling errors in the results make it impossible to know for sure. Our next example, from the NAEP Math Reading Assessment, provides a case in point.

The graph below shows the proficiency rates by year for Kentucky’s white and Black fourth grade public school students.

Again, as with the reading results we posted yesterday, if a prior year’s proficiency rate or gap is posted in boldface type, it is statistically significantly different from the 2022 result.

For example, for white students, the NAEP Grade 4 Math proficiency rates for 2013 to 2019 are all statistically significantly higher than the 2022 rate. And, white proficiency rates from 2005 and earlier are statistically significantly lower than in 2022.

A couple of things fall out of this graph.

  • White proficiency rates went stagnant in math by 2013 until the new 2022 drop occurred.

  • The 2022 proficiency rate for whites is not statistically different from earlier rates between 2007 to 2011. That’s more than a decade of progress lost.

  • Unlike the reading situation, the math decay in 2022 for Kentucky’s Black students is so dramatic that it is also statistically significantly lower than rates between 2011 and 2019.

  • The current Black math proficiency rate for fourth graders is essentially equal to rates from 2003 to 2009. We have definitely gone backwards with Black math proficiency.

  • The 2022 gap is larger than gaps from 1992 through 2005 by a statistically significant amount.

Now let’s examine the eighth-grade situation.

Quick points here:

  • White proficiency tumbled in 2022 and is statistically significantly lower than in 2007 through 2019.

  • White proficiency is no different from that in 2000 to 2005. We have to go all the way back to 1996 to see where the 2022 proficiency rate was definitely larger.

  • Except for the first year in 1990, Kentucky’s Black student NAEP Grade 8 Math proficiency rate has not notably changed at all. Essentially, it is flat from 1992 onward.

  • The gap is somewhat reduced from 2017, but it isn’t statistically significantly different from the gaps from 1992 to 2015 or the 2019 gap, either.

Any way you look at this data, it isn’t a pretty story, and problems started well before COVID came on the scene, with white performance going flat by 2013 or so and Black performance flat all the way back to the early 1990s.

Given these unexciting results, it is clearly time for Kentucky to explore more options.

Tech Note:

The data used to assemble the graphs come from the NAEP Data Explorer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, Kentucky has a massive problem with ineffective instruction in math. It is getting worse. But a lot of our educators want to keep on with the same, unscientific approaches that haven’t worked in over 30 years. That, quite simply, has got to change.

And, if Kentucky’s public school educators continue to fight what science shows works best for math instruction, it is high time for the state to offer real alternatives to our students.

Richard Innes