What happened to Kentucky’s NAEP achievement gaps for reading?

The 2022 testing results from the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress are out, and the results, as expected, are lower in many cases, but in some cases the sampling errors in the results make it impossible to know for sure. Our first example, from the NAEP Grade Reading Assessment, provides a case in point.

The graph below shows the proficiency rates by year for Kentucky’s white and Black public school students. When a white or Black reading proficiency rate is statistically different from the 2022 rate, that number is shown in boldface type. For example, the white student proficiency rates for 2015 and 2017 are larger than the 2022 rate and are in boldface accordingly. In addition, the white proficiency rates for reading back in 1992 and 1994 were lower than the 2022 rate and are also shown in boldface.

However, NONE of the Black student proficiency rates are statistically significantly different from the rate for Blacks in 2022, so all appear in standard typeface.

Likewise, the differences between the achievement gaps for years before 2022 are all statistically insignificant compared to the 2022 gap, so all of these numbers are also in standard typeface.

Looking at the white results in more detail, it is clear that there has been a real decay in performance since 2015. Also, that decay started well before COVID hit after the 2019 NAEP was administered. So, the decay cannot be solely blamed on the pandemic.

The situation for Black students is also troubling, but for a different reason. Black reading proficiency rates in Kentucky have always low, but as far as the NAEP can tell us, even as of 2022 there is no detectable change in Black performance all the way back to 1992.

How about eighth grade reading?

This graph tells that story for Kentucky’s public school students. Note that NAEP didn’t provide Grade 8 Reading scores until 1998.

As with the fourth-grade situation, white student performance on NAEP started to slide in Kentucky well before COVID hit. The latest results for 2022 are definitely lower than reading proficiency rates for Kentucky’s white students in a number of earlier years running from 2011 to 2017.

As with the fourth-grade situation, Kentucky’s Black students have made no detectable progress on NAEP Reading all the way back to 1998. The gap situation in 2022 is unchanged all the way back to 1998, as well.

Overall, Kentucky’s fourth-grade reading proficiency rate on NAEP fell four points, from 35% to only 31% between 2019 and 2022.

For the Bluegrass State’s eighth-graders, between 2019 and 2022 proficiency rates fell from 33% to 29%.

This adds even more urgency to the comments we have made in several recent Bluegrass Institute reports, “What Milton Wright knew about reading instruction, but lots of teachers apparently don’t,” and “Reading proficiency rates rising in some Appalachian schools,” and to the massive amount of detail in Courier Journal reporter Mandy McLaren’s explosive set of articles, “Between the Lines” (sorry, paywall), about reading problems in Kentucky.

So, Kentucky has a massive problem with ineffective instruction in reading. It is getting worse. But, as McLaren’s articles point out, a lot of our educators want to keep on with the same, unscientific approaches that haven’t worked in over 30 years. That, quite simply, has got to change.

And, if Kentucky’s public school educators continue to fight what science shows works best for reading instruction, it is high time for the state to offer real alternatives to our students.

Tech Note: 

The proficiency rate information used to generate the graphs came from the NAEP Data Explorer.

https://bipps.org/blog/what-happened-to-kentuckys-naep-achievement-gaps-for-reading

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