Why I am concerned about real KERA progress – Part 2

I wrote yesterday about how the results from the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress grade 4 math assessment concern me that KERA, 20 years later, isn’t performing nearly as well as we need it to.

Here is how Kentucky stacked up at the eighth grade level on the same assessment. As with the fourth grade example, I look only at white student scores here because about 85 percent of our students are white. It makes sense to examine how the vast majority of our students compare to their peers in other states. This also prevents giving Kentucky an unfair advantage in the comparison against states like California where there has been a huge influx of non-English speaking immigrants in the past few years.

Note that green is NOT GOOD NEWS for Kentucky on this map! States shown in green got math scores for their whites that were statistically significantly higher than our eighth grade whites got.


Note that only one state, West Virginia, did worst than Kentucky, and just six other states statistically tied us.

One of those ties was Mississippi, by the way. As with fourth grade, they caught us in the new NAEP math assessment.

That’s why, I must repeat, as KERA closes in on its 20th anniversary, I am concerned.

Note: Map assembled with the NAEP State Comparisons mapping tool