So, You Think Kentucky’s Writing Portfolios Work

A couple of days ago I posted “NAEP – Beware Those Pesky Cautions” with some interesting data on how our kids’ performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress looks after you separate data for Whites and Blacks.

I have now had a chance to run some statistical significance tests on the White eighth grade writing performance in 1998 and 2007.

In 1998, Kentucky’s White students only got a statistically higher score for eighth grade writing than Whites in one other state – Arkansas.

In 2007, almost a decade later, a decade where certain college presidents in this state and many others told us how much writing had improved, Kentucky’s White students only got a statistically significantly higher score than one other state – West Virginia.

Now, how’s that again about all the great claims about Kentucky’s writing portfolio program? Since about 85 percent of our kids are White, it looks like the vast majority of our children are being left far behind their peers. So, it looks like what teachers are saying is right – having writing portfolios in the CATS assessments is simply a very bad idea.