Why denying school choice in Kentucky particularly hurts Black students

I’ve already written several times about how school choice-rich Florida has moved ahead of Kentucky on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in a number of areas, including reading. But I think we need to focus on the picture for Kentucky’s Black students. The two-part table below will help with that (the tables were created using the NAEP Data Explorer). 

The left side of the table shows results from the 1992 administration of the NAEP Grade 4 Reading Assessment for the states that took part that year. These results are for public schools only and only for Black students.

Notice that Kentucky’s Black students actually faired pretty well compared to their racial counterparts in the 32 other participating states, posting a NAEP Scale Score for Grade 4 reading of 196 that ranked 13th best. In fact, allowing for the statistical sampling errors in NAEP, Kentucky’s Black students were only statistically significantly outscored by Blacks in just one other state, Iowa.

Kentucky’s performance was statistically significantly higher than the score of 185 that Florida’s Black students achieved. Florida’s Black public school students, as you can see, ranked very low in 1992.

Now, look at the right side of the table. This covers the 2019 results for the same states that participated in 1992. Again, the results are for Black public school students only.

What a change! Kentucky’s Black public school students have slipped back to 23rd place while Florida’s have absolutely blossomed. Florida now ranks way up in fourth place for its Black students’ NAEP Scale Score of 211, which is also dramatically higher than Florida’s score of 185 in 1992 (some NAEP analyses indicate that a 10-point scale score difference is equal to about a full year of extra schooling).

Also, rather than scoring statistically significantly higher than Florida’s Black students, Kentucky’s Blacks now score statistically significantly lower. It’s a dramatic flip-flop. Furthermore, Kentucky’s NAEP Scale Score for Blacks in Grade 4 reading has only improved from 196 in 1992 to just 199 in the most recent testing. That isn’t even a statistically significant change in Kentucky’s score. It’s also not much to show for Kentucky’s Black students after more than a quarter-century of effort and money.

And, let’s be very clear about this. Don’t think for a moment that Kentucky’s Black students have any less potential than Florida’s. Rather, different approaches in the school systems seem responsible for the performance differences. And, the major difference between Florida’s system and Kentucky’s is that Florida has lots of school choice to spur their public schools to better performance. Kentucky’s schools have no competition and operate like monopolies, which no longer exist in most sectors of our society.

Gov. Beshear’s veto of House Bill 563, which would create public and private school-choice options for Kentucky’s parents, certainly isn’t going to do anything to spur the state’s public schools to improve. If the veto is overridden by the legislature, then Kentucky might finally start to show the benefits – in its public schools – that Florida already enjoys.

Otherwise, students in forward-looking states like Florida seem almost certain to outdistance our children even more.