Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Kentucky students are not behind Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, or the nation

After receiving questions regarding the Kentuckians Advocating for Reform in Education's television commercials and website text we researched the data, and this post shares our findings.

The information presented by KARE in commercials here and here and website text here invites serious misunderstandings. No matter your position on charter schools, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, and the nation are not doing better than Kentucky on the student performance measures KARE presents.

Fourth-Grade Reading
KARE’s commercials cite 2011 NAEP results showing:
  • 65% of Kentucky students reading below the proficient level. 
That figure is correct, but Kentucky is not scoring behind the states with charter schools listed in the KARE commercial. Instead, the same assessment shows:
  • 67% of Indiana students reading below the proficient level. 
  • 66% of Ohio students reading below the proficient level.
  • 74% of Tennessee students reading below the proficient level. 
  • 68% of students nationwide reading below the proficient level.
Fourth grade reading results do not show Kentucky scoring behind the states listed in the KARE commercial

African-American Eighth Grade Reading 
KARE’s commercials also cite 2011 NAEP results showing:
  • 42% of Kentucky African-American students reading below the basic level. 
Again, that does not mean Kentucky students are at a disadvantage compared to the states KARE cites for comparison. The same assessment shows:
  • 41% of Indiana African-American students reading below the basic level.
  • 42% of Ohio African-American students reading below the basic level.
  • 52% of Tennessee African-American students reading below the basic level.
  • 42% of African-American students nationwide reading below the basic level. 

Graduation Rates 
KARE’s commercials and website do not give a source for the claim that 25% of Kentucky high school freshmen will not graduate on time. If they add a reference, PrichBlog will be happy to report on how other states compare.

As a first analysis, though, the federal calculations of all states’ average freshman graduation rates estimate that for ninth graders from fall 2005 who should have graduated in 2009:
  • 23% of Kentucky freshmen did not graduate on time. 
  • 25% of Indiana’s freshmen did not graduate on time.
  • 20% of Ohio’s freshmen did not graduate on time.
  • 23% of Tennessee’s freshmen did not graduate on time. 
  • 24% of freshmen nationwide did not graduate on time. 

Other NAEP Results
KARE’s website shows some additional NAEP results not included in the commercials. In context, those results show Kentucky tied or ahead of the country and the other three states far more often than Kentucky is behind.

Adding Science to the Mix
The KARE site does not share any of Kentucky's 2009 NAEP science results.  Here's an important snapshot of Kentucky students results related to the jurisdictions mentioned in KARE's commercials, further clarifying that Kentucky public schools are not falling behind the comparison group.

To restate the main point, whatever the merits of charter schools, Kentucky students are not being left behind the students of Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, and the nation.

Source Notes: NAEP data downloaded from the Data Explorer on January 24, 2012.  AFGR results downloaded from the National Center for Education Statistics on January 24, 2012.

7 comments:

  1. The statistic for not completing highschool appears to be the states dropout rate that ispostedon KDE's website

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  2. Anon,

    Thank you for your assistance. Can you share the exact URL for the page you're seeing with that number.

    I ask because I'm seeing rates on 2010 rates on the KDE website of 76.68% or 80.50% depending on method. I'm looking at http://www.education.ky.gov/NR/rdonlyres/7867CCCB-5E01-4FA6-9268-2366413804C6/0/GraduationRateDataBriefingPacket2Aug11.pdf.

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  3. Thank you for providing a balanced look at the data to help us understand this complex issue. Yes the results need to be better, and KY is not alone in that regard. We all need to work smarter, work together, and keep the academic outcomes of students at the forefront of these discussions at all times.

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  4. Sparkly people love this post! I am still trying to form my opinion about charter schools and their place in the education business. I look forward to the ensuing intellectual dialogue about this issue.

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  5. While the data shows that other states are not ahead of us, it still looks like, we, as a nation are not serving our African-American, Hispanic or low-socioeconomic children very well. While their scores have improved they are still very far behind their white counterparts. I would only hope that, Kentucky, as a state, would put more priority on getting these groups to the top with the other children.

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  6. I heartily agree. Saying that Kentucky is keeping pace with other states doesn't mean we're doing enough, especially for students from groups that have historically been left behind. Like every other state, we need to pick up our game dramatically to get ALL kids ready for future success.

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  7. No matter what a person's position is on this issue, it is important that decisions are made based on good data and research. Thanks Susan for providing this information. Also, we totally agree that Kentucky has a long way to go to educate all of our children at high levels.

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Updates and data on Kentucky education!