More on Louisiana Vs. Kentucky on the ACT

After I started posting comments on the new ACT score release yesterday, I was engaged by an anonymous reader with an obvious bias against charter schools. That individual also seems to be having a lot of trouble getting his or her facts straight. That happens in this blog from time to time, and we do work to try to insure that our readers get an accurate picture when those who post comments are confused.

However, sometimes, good comes from those reader challenges, even when the reader is wrong.

A case in point: our anonymous – and not well-informed – correspondent alleged that Louisiana tested 100 percent of its students with the ACT in 2007. That isn’t true, but when I checked the right information for 2007, I discovered something that adds to my evidence that post-Katrina Louisiana has made some remarkable progress on the ACT.

Here is the real data on graduates tested and ACT scores for Kentucky and Louisiana from 2007. It is on line in the ACT, Incorporated’s web site, accessible under the “ACT Average Composite Scores by State” section (I removed other state data for clarity).


Notice that both states had nearly identical numbers of graduates tested in 2007 (77 percent in Kentucky and 79 percent in Louisiana) and that Louisiana scored 0.6 point lower on the ACT Composite Score than Kentucky.

Because the 2007 participation rates are so very close, I think comparison of these scores is reasonable.

Now, flash forward to 2011. Here is how ACT reported that data.


Notice that both states now test all their graduates. However, the ACT Composite Score situation has flip-flopped. Louisiana – ravaged by Katrina six years ago – now scores 0.6 point higher than Kentucky.

So, between 2007 and 2011 charter school rich Louisiana went from 0.6 point below Kentucky’s ACT Composite Score to 0.6 point above. That relative change of 1.2 points is noteworthy on a 36 point test like the ACT.

Even after I pointed this out, our anonymous nay-sayer was unconvinced. He or she tried to claim something to the effect that only the rich had moved back to Louisiana after the big storm hit.

I doubted that assertion, so I checked the percentages of students eligible for free and reduced cost lunches in the National Assessment of Educational Progress eighth grade reading assessments of 2003 (Closest pre-Katrina administration) and 2009 (most recently available). I used the NAEP Data Explorer to find those figures.

Guess what: In 2003, free and reduced cost lunch eligible students in Louisiana amounted to 50% of all the students there.

In 2009, lunch eligibility in Louisiana rose significantly to 62 percent, an increase of 12 points.

In contrast, Kentucky’s poverty rate was 42 percent in 2003 and rose to only 47 percent in 2009.

So, Louisiana had 8 points more poverty in 2003 and that rose to 15 points more by 2009.

If anything, based on the most recently available student poverty rates in NAEP, Louisiana should be at a notably higher disadvantage relative to Kentucky today than it was back in 2003 before Katrina hit. That makes Louisiana’s progress on the ACT even more remarkable.

The ACT doesn’t report on poverty rates, so for now the 2009 data is the most recent I can offer. But, most school statistics don’t change all that rapidly, so it is still very likely that poverty in Louisiana remains notably higher than Kentucky’s even today.

This adds more evidence that something in Louisiana is boosting their performance, and charter schools, which now enroll 70 percent of the students in New Orleans, for example, certainly seem likely to be a part of the process.

How many Kentucky high school grads in 2011 were prepared for college and careers?

Not many

This graph, which I developed from data in the Kentucky Department of Education’s news release 11-067 about the 2011 ACT scores, tells the tale (click on it to enlarge).


Note that I only include years where Kentucky conducted 100 percent testing of all graduates.

Also, keep in mind that the benchmarks are developed by ACT after a survey of a number of colleges that use this assessment for admissions. Thus, the benchmarks represent an average level of rigor across a number of different colleges. Students with lower scores might survive in colleges with lower levels of rigor, but their educations will probably be of lesser quality, as well. On the other hand, students will need even higher performance to survive in more demanding schools.

Currently, a little more than half of our students are going on to postsecondary education. It looks like most of them are ready for a freshman college English composition course.

However, in math, only one in four Kentucky public high school graduates is ready for college algebra, generally the minimal math requirement for most degrees except elementary school teachers (and, that is a mistake I have often commented about before).

Only two out of five Kentucky public high school graduates read well enough to survive a freshman social studies course in a typical university.

Less than half of our college bound students are likely to survive in freshman biology or another science course.

Finally, only 14 percent of our graduates are fully prepared for a liberal arts education across all four areas.

As you examine the graph, you will see that progress so far is coming at a painfully slow rate, generally improving by only a percentage point or two over the past three years. We need to jump start this process if we are going to do justice to our kids, who are about to enter a very changed adult world where yesterday’s education simply will no longer do.

Kentucky’s non-public students boost overall state scores in new ACT reports

The Bluegrass Institute is always being asked if we have any idea how private school students in Kentucky perform academically.

The answer is, yes, we do have some information. And, that information just got a new update.

And, it shows that private and home school students in Kentucky are doing a really good job.

The ACT college entrance test scores for the graduating class of 2011 were released earlier today, and I’ll be doing a lot of analysis of this very important information.

A few hours ago, I also got a copy of the Kentucky Department of Education’s news release 11-067, which includes ACT scores for graduating public schools students only. Earlier, I obtained the overall average scores for all Kentucky graduates, public, private and home schools combined, from the ACT Profile Summary Report for Kentucky for 2011.

That allows me to do a little algebra to compute how many non-public school students graduated in Kentucky in 2011 and how they did as a group on the ACT.

Here are three tables that tell the tale from 1993 to the present.

The first one presents overall results for all students combined. These are scores directly released by the ACT, Incorporated in its reports.


Notice that the overall scores for Kentucky dropped notably in 2009, which is the first year the state tested all students with the ACT. That added about 25 percent of our graduates who had not previously chosen to take the ACT when it was optional, and taken at student cost.

This next table covers public high school students’ performance in Kentucky. These scores come from the Kentucky Department of Education’s news release.


Notice here that our ACT Composite score was 19.1 in 2009, the first year we started 100 percent testing, and dropped to 19.0 the next year. Then, in 2011, we came back up to 19.2. So, our improvement since the first year of 100 percent testing has been 0.1 point. That isn’t a lot to crow about, but it is an improvement.

Finally, this last table covers the performance of the non-public school students. I had to calculate these figures.


There are some very important things to consider here.

First, I have no way to know whether or not the 4,232 students tested in 2011 represent all of the non-public school graduates in Kentucky. However, I suspect that a rather high percentage of the non-public school students in the state do take the ACT.

Second, the number of non-public school students tested dropped slightly from 2010 but still represents nearly a tenth of all the students in the state. That is enough for private and home school graduates to make a notable difference in the all-student scores in the first, blue-shaded table above.

I suspect the private school drop is related to the economic situation.

Next, Kentucky’s non-public students notably outscore our public school students, and the gap has been growing recently.

For example, in 2009 public school graduates had an ACT Composite of 19.1 and non-public school graduates scored 22.1, a difference of 3.0 points.

In 2010, the gap grew to 4.0 points.

For this year’s graduates, the public to private/home school gap enlarged further to 4.4 points.

Thus, in 2009, private school graduates pulled up the public school ACT Composite of 19.1 to an overall average score of 19.4, a difference of 0.3 point.

In 2010, the non-public school graduates’ 23.0 ACT Composite pulled up the public school composite of 19.0 to an overall average of 19.4, a difference of 0.4 point.

Finally, in 2011, Kentucky’s private and home school graduates pulled up the public school average again by 0.4 point.

So, in evaluating only overall scores for Kentucky, it is important to keep in mind that they reflect an important contribution from Kentucky’s non-public school graduates.

When we look at the trend in scores only for Kentucky public school graduates since we adopted 100 percent ACT testing, we have only improved performance by the minimum amount detectable, 0.1 point.

Still, the trend is starting to go in the right direction. This offers hope for the future even though Kentucky clearly has a very long way to go and really needs to look at what is happening in a key charter school state, Louisiana, which I blogged about earlier today.

Don’t know much about geography, either!

New federal testing results for geography were released today, and the results are not impressive.

In fact, Education Week’s headline pretty much sums it up.

“Students Lose Way in NAEP Geography Test”

Between 1994 and 2010 scores rose a bit for fourth grade students but stayed flat for eighth graders and declined by a statistically significant amount for high school seniors.

Not surprisingly, Daniel Edelson, the vice president of education at the Washington-based National Geographic Society, took a dim view of the new scores. He said:

“The basic story here is that we have not invested in geography education at all in the last decade. Both for workforce preparedness and national security, there are big costs to neglecting geography education. You need people who can reason about geographic challenges … people who understand water and energy systems.”

One interesting comment from EdWeek says:

“Geography and other social studies are often lumped together in courses, which can reduce students’ ability to form a coherent foundation of knowledge over time.”

Could that be a problem in Kentucky, too?

Unfortunately, the new report only provides nationwide results. Individual state performance was not surveyed.

Cheating on state assessments could bring more federal intrusion

Education Week is reporting (subscription?) that US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is really unhappy about major cheating scandals on state assessments unfolding in Atlanta and Washington DC.

EdWeek says the feds are now talking about creating anti-cheating rules states will have to follow with their assessment programs to keep a watch for cheating.

Getting caught for cheating on tests with federal implications could have serious consequences. The EdWeek article indicates this might involve charges of fraud.

As always, the federal lever is funding. States that don’t want to follow the federal playbook on cheating might find themselves shorted on federal education dollars.

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Fight over more challenging curriculum continues in Frankfort

School board wants higher standards

Teachers don’t

More evidence of problems with school councils in Kentucky


The latest squabble between a locally elected board of education and that district’s teachers, who control the School Based Decision Making Councils (SBDM) in the district’s schools, is playing out in the Frankfort Independent School District.

Thanks to Kentucky’s incredibly ill-advised SBDM laws, the teachers are winning the fight, and kids are losing.

The crux of the argument is that the board wants to adopt an educational program from the College Board called “Springboard.” It is aligned to the new Common Core State Standards, which are now mandated statewide. Those new standards focus on getting kids ready for college and careers.

Teachers in the district fuss that Springboard is too demanding and will leave some kids behind. Frankfort’s teachers apparently have no sense of urgency about dealing with the fact that recent readiness testing shows dismally low numbers of the district’s students are on track for success.


So, the real question might be: Are teachers controlling the SBDMs worried about kids, or are they mostly just upset about having to make some significant changes in the way they teach in order to reach higher, badly needed standards?

Taking liberty to the airwaves: BIPPS on the Joe Elliott Show

Richard Innes, education analyst for the Bluegrass Institute, will be on the Joe Elliott Show on 970 WGTK-AM in Louisville on Monday at 1 p.m. EDT.

Innes will be discussing the current educational challenges in Kentucky.

The Joe Elliott Show is broadcast weekdays from Noon to 3 p.m. EDT.

Listen live here.

In a recent blog emphasizing the need to better prepare elementary school teachers in order to improve Kentucky students' sagging Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) results, Innes writes:

"Kentucky’s current requirements for elementary teachers create a set up for people who are math phoebes to get into teaching – a situation virtually guaranteed to create problems for students that will lock those kids out of any chance to go into the areas of science, technology, math and science – the so-called STEM areas."

Finally telling it right

Our high schools are not preparing kids for college and careers

It was a remarkably candid admission from Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday.

The Central Kentucky News-Journal reports:



“Holliday said Kentucky's education system sells a false promise to students that if they graduate high school they are ready for college or a career. The reality is, he said, that many of those graduates are not.”




Basically, that’s exactly what the Bluegrass Institute has been pointing out since we opened shop in 2003. It’s nice to have at least one state official honest enough to admit to this obvious truth.

Holliday also pointed out that the state’s new assessment and accountability system, which will launch in the next school term, aims to change this unsatisfactory situation. I hope his aim is right on target.

Don’t know much about history

Kentucky social studies/history standards just got a “D” in new study from the Thomas Fordham Foundation.

Says Fordham:

“Kentucky’s heavily abstract and thematic standards not only fail to outline specific content in each grade, but also give little sense even of the historical time spans meant to be covered. Details of U.S. history make only fleeting appearances amid myriad strands, themes, and sub-themes.”

The report later says:

“Students are expected to understand, analyze, and interpret historical events, conditions, trends, and issues with the goal of developing historical perspective. Yet Kentucky’s U.S. history standards are virtually content-free.”

Teaching history without any factual information. Imagine that!

Let’s hope the new standards due in the next year or so are a big improvement.

Fordham study trashes education standards used in Kentucky

Says pending new standards should be MUCH better for us

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute just published comparisons of all the states’ existing education standards versus the new Common Core Standards that Kentucky is now adopting. The new standards were developed by a partnership of the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors’ Association.

The new standards will guide course development in Kentucky and also will be the basis for the new public school assessments the state plans to introduce in about a year.

The change comes none too soon for Kentucky’s children, because the Fordham report says our existing education standards are “among the worst in the country.”

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