Education Week - October 9, 2013 - 12

Ky. Sees Mixed Results on Tests Aligned to Common Core
Second year’s scores
a blend of dips, gains
By Andrew Ujifusa
Results in Kentucky from a second
year of assessments aligned to the
Common Core State Standards reveal
improvement for many groups of students,
but some scores remained flat
or dipped on the English/language
arts and mathematics exams intended
to assess college and career readiness.
Middle and high school students
showed progress on the Kentucky
1/2 horiz
Performance Rating for Education
Progress (K-PREP) reading tests
for the 2012-13 school year. But
high school performance in math
dropped, and various achievement
gaps among racial groups also persisted
in the scores released by the
state last month.
The changing nature of tests as
they are aligned to the common core
can be highly controversial. There
was concern and criticism in New
York this past summer, for example,
when such new tests administered
in the 2012-13 school year produced
markedly lower scores.
Critics say the new test results will
harm schools, teachers, and students.
But the revamped tests’ defenders
argue that the new test results are
more accurate depictions of students’
knowledge and capabilities.
The concern “is they did not go up
fast enough,” Kentucky Commissioner
of Education Terry Holliday
said during a Sept. 26 press conference
when he discussed the results.
Proficiency Ups and Downs
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OFFICER OF SCHOOL SUPPORT NETWORKS,
Baltimore City Schools
Helped lower the student suspension
rate from one in five to one in eight
by creating the Success Academy
The new common-core-aligned
tests were first given in the 201112
school year, replacing the previous
Commonwealth Accountability
Testing System (CATS), and scores
on those first K-PREP tests plunged
dramatically that year. For example,
reading proficiency among elementary
school students dropped by 28
percentage points from 2010-11 levels,
down to 48 percent of students
scoring at proficient levels.
Such drops weren’t repeated on the
2012-13 school year tests. At several
levels, there were improvements.
Reading proficiency rose for both
middle school students (from 46.8
percent to 51.1 percent) and high
school students (from 52.2 percent to
55.8 percent), while math proficiency
for elementary school students also
rose by 3.5 percentage points, up to
43.9 percent.
Students receiving free and re-
duced-price meals in both middle and
high schools showed improvement,
while black students in elementary
school math and middle school reading
improved by nearly 3 and 4 percentage
points, respectively.
But high school math scores
dipped by 4 percentage points, to
36 percent proficient, while reading
scores for all elementary school students
remained flat.
In addition, key achievement gaps
showed no signs of shrinking. The
performance gap between black
elementary school students and their
white counterparts in math crept up,
from 20.7 percentage points to 21.4
percentage points, for example, and
the black-white gaps in math for both
middle and high schools also grew by
small amounts.
Most subgroups of students missed
their performance targets on the
tests, including low-income students,
black students, and English-language
learners. (These are aspirational
goals set by the state, but not used
for accountability purposes.) Asian
middle school students were the only
group to hit their aspirational target
on the reading test.
Mr. Holliday said that the decrease
in the high school math scores in
particular could be attributed to the
increase in the number of test-takers
from about 40,600 in the 2011-12
school year to about 44,100 in 201213;
he argued such an increase typically
leads to lower test results.
Meanwhile, scores on the ACT in
math for high school students in-
creased from 2011-12 to 2012-13, he
noted, showing that a greater proportion
of students were demonstrating
college- and career-readiness in that
area. (The math score for the state’s
public school juniors went from 18.8
to 18.9 over the past year, but since
2007-08, the department said, the
score has gone up by 0.8 points.)
The score gains are consistent
with expectations as schools implement
the common core, said Chris
Minnich, the executive director of
the Council of Chief State School
Officers, which oversaw the development
of the standards along with
the National Governors Association.
“We wouldn’t expect the adjust-
ment to higher standards to take
place in one year. So the good news
is that the trend is in the right direction,”
he said.
Warning Signs Seen
But others saw more ominous signs.
While it’s too soon to draw broad
conclusions, the results, in particular
those that reveal a persistent achievement
gap over the first two years of
testing with the standards, “don’t offer
the kind of encouragement that a lot
of people wanted to see,” said Richard
Innes, an education policy analyst at
the Bluegrass Institute, a rightleaning
think tank in Lexington, Ky.
“We’re leaving far too many kids—
whites and blacks—with an inadequate
education,” he said.
Portrait photo by Matt Roth for Education Week
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Education Week - October 9, 2013

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