Jefferson County Schools’ achievement gap problems show in KPREP, too

It wasn’t long after the Bluegrass Institute released our new report on “Blacks Continue Falling Through the Gaps in Louisville’s Schools, the 2016 Update” before the Jefferson County Public School District (JCPS) honored us with a response.

In fact, the JCPS Response came out only a few hours after our report release news conference ended last Monday.

JCPS clearly isn’t happy with the disturbing evidence we uncovered that three years after our last Blacks Falling Through Gaps report, the achievement gaps in Louisville’s schools at best have not really improved much and in some cases like readiness testing are largely getting worse.

Still, the JCPS criticized the institute for not looking at gains in proficiency rates, as this extract from their response shows.

JeffCo Response Extract on KPREP

JeffCo Response Extract on KPREP

That got us thinking. Our report shows that proficiency rates for blacks generally have declined between 2011-12 and 2014-15 on both the EXPLORE and PLAN readiness tests, so Jefferson County had to be talking about KPREP test scores.

We did not pay attention to KPREP trends over time because of recent evidence we assembled at the institute (see here, here, here, here and here) that KPREP is showing some signs of score inflation.

Still, the JCPS brought the subject up, claiming blacks had made progress on KPREP. But, while the JCPS Response talked about black score increases, it was strangely silent about white score trends. Hmm, we thought. Why is that information not discussed?

So, we pulled the 2011-12 and 2014-15 KPREP test results from the Kentucky School Report Cards for Jefferson County into a set of tables similar to Tables 1 and 2 in our report, which cover the EXPLORE and PLAN trends. Pretty quickly, we saw why the JCPS response didn’t mention white scores.

Here is the table for the elementary school KPREP proficiency rate results for whites and blacks in Jefferson County. There are four subjects that we can examine for achievement gap trends over time (KPREP’s science test is in rewrite and no 2014-15 scores are available).

JeffCo Elementary KPREP Gap Changes 2012 to 2015

JeffCo Elementary KPREP Gap Changes 2012 to 2015

Now we can see why the JCPS Response was silent about what white scores were doing. The last two columns show that between 2011-12 and 2014-15 white elementary school students’ KPREP scores rose faster in all four subject areas. As a consequence, the WHITE MINUS BLACK KPREP ACHIEVEMENT GAPS IN JEFFERSON COUNTY'S ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS GOT WORSE ACROSS THE BOARD, as noted in the column highlighted with the red background.

Black scores did go up, but white scores went up more. And, don’t forget, some of the score increases may be illusory because it looks like KPREP might have some inflation issues.

We looked at still more. Click the "Read more" link to see what happened in the middle schools and high schools.

This next table shows the middle school trends.

JeffCo Middle KPREP Gap Changes 2012 to 2015

JeffCo Middle KPREP Gap Changes 2012 to 2015

The column that notes “Change” in the gaps mostly has red highlighting, too, because in all areas except social studies, JCPS blacks are further behind whites now than they were four years ago. We also note that in middle school testing there actually were score declines for whites in social studies and blacks in writing. This isn’t good news.

Next, look at the high school KPREP results, which actually come from a different set of tests from a different test supplier. High school KPREP actually uses a set of End-of-Course exams from the ACT, Inc., the same organization that creates the well-known ACT college entrance tests. Because these tests are used in other states, there is more pressure on ACT to keep the scores stable over time.

JeffCo High KPREP Gap Changes 2012 to 2015

JeffCo High KPREP Gap Changes 2012 to 2015

Here we see some really disturbing trends. Not only did the white minus black achievement gap grow in three of the five areas tested, but the actual scores for both white and blacks declined between 2011-12 and 2014-15 in the critical areas of English II, which is also used as a proxy for “reading” reporting, and Algebra II, which is the KPREP math proxy for high schools.

Take a look at the slight reduction in the white minus black math achievement gap and then note that this is due to the disastrous decay in white math scores of 8.4 points between 2011-12 and 2014-15. That white decay was about twice as large as the black math decay. The only reason the gap got better is because the white math score dramatically declined.

So, here is the bottom line: JCPS cannot really spin much of a claim of success with gaps even when we look at possibly inflating KPREP results. In 10 of the 13 school level/subject combinations covered in our tables above, the white minus black achievement gaps got worse. And, the picture would actually look like 11 of 13 school level/subject combinations where gaps increased if the white Algebra II End-of-Course results had not tumbled dramatically between 2011-12 and 2014-15.Clearly, the achievement gap problem in JCPS is real, and chronic. It is time to offer the district’s students some better choices for education, most definitely including charter schools. With two bills now introduced in the Kentucky Legislature to create charter schools, it is time for people to stop making excuses for the status quo and to start doing something better for kids.

The JCPS Response touched on some other areas, so stay tuned for more on that, too.