Wow! Hispanic students in Florida’s charter schools have eliminated their achievement gap with Kentucky’s white students

Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reveal another shocking example

of how school choice can erase achievement gaps. It’s remarkable.

It was a surprising story, made more so by the fact that in general Kentucky’s white minus Black

achievement gaps have remained unchanged, or even worsened, since KERA was enacted in 1990.

The fact that, thanks to better school choice options, any sort of racial achievement gaps were being

reduced was news.

Now we have learned that another racial achievement gap has been eliminated between Kentucky

and minority students in another state with enough students for NAEP to report their scores. This

time, the racial group involved is Florida’s Hispanics in public charter schools (Georgia doesn’t have

enough Hispanics for NAEP to report their charter school results).

Here’s how the Florida charter school Hispanics versus Kentucky white students’ picture looks from

the last pre-COVID NAEP:

In every case, Florida’s public charter school Hispanic scores are reported as somewhat higher than

the scores for Kentucky’s white students. However, after allowing for the statistical sampling errors

present in all NAEP scores, none of the differences are statistically significant. Still, the fact that

Florida’s charter school Hispanics tied Kentucky’s white students’ performance is quite remarkable

given that, in general, racial minorities have trended well behind white students’ scores on the NAEP.

Even COVID didn’t change the picture much. Here are the results from the 2022 NAEP:

Again, it doesn’t look like any differences are statistically significant, so the most accurate

summation is to say Florida’s charter school Hispanics were tied with Kentucky’s traditional public

school whites in all the grades and subjects shown in 2022.

Results like we’re seeing in Georgia’s and Florida’s charter school systems add more urgency to the

need for Kentucky to get going to expand school choice options in its educational landscape. As

Kentucky continues to drag its heels, children in other states that have good school choice programs,

including children of color, are starting to pass by even the white students in the Bluegrass State.

Tech Note: All NAEP scores from the NAEP Data Explorer.