New federal report shows even Mississippi beat us for fourth grade math scores!

The US Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences released a new report today on “Achievement Gaps, How Black and White Students in Public Schools Perform in Mathematics and Reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Statistical Analysis Report.”

The findings are bound to raise eyebrows here.


Among the most shocking revelations: while some people have told us – again and again – about how our kids are doing pretty well on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the new report shows that in fourth grade math our White kids were even outscored by ----- Whites in MISSISSIPPI! Mississippi Whites also tied our Whites for eighth grade reading.

They are starting to catch us.

By the way, the report mentioned that our Black to White score gap on this NAEP assessment is lower than most other states. However, the table above makes it clear that this is only the case because our White kids perform so poorly.

In fact, when Stuart Kerachsky, Acting Commissioner, National Center for Education Statistics, discussed the gap report today, he used Kentucky as a specific example that a low gap does not necessarily indicate good performance.

Commissioner Kerachsky knows what some in Kentucky apparently don’t – when Whites set a very low target for Blacks to shoot at, no one wins.