‘A lot of work left to be done.’ Majority of KY schools see medium rating on latest report card

Only 24% of all schools in Kentucky had more than half of its students testing proficient or distinguished in math, according to a Herald-Leader analysis of statewide spring 2023 test results released Tuesday evening by the Kentucky Department of Education.

Overall, Kentucky’s elementary, middle and high schools received a yellow rating, or the third highest level in a color-coded accountability system.

Using data from the 2022-2023 school year, Kentucky’s accountability system provides a color-coded overall performance rating for each school, district and the state by level, ranging from red (the lowest), orange, yellow, green to blue (the highest) for each level of schools: elementary, middle and high.

Kentucky Interim Commissioner of Education Robin Fields Kinney said there is progress in some areas, especially at the elementary school level, “but there is still a lot of work left to be done.”

“We must not underestimate how much of an impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on our children,” Kinney said. “We know that changes in the way instruction was delivered from 2020 to 2022 had an impact on student learning, despite the tremendous efforts of Kentucky educators and parents to remediate those impacts.”

Kentucky saw improvement with students deemed proficient or distinguished in reading at the elementary school level, Kinney said.

She said the number of elementary school students deemed proficient or distinguished in math, science and social studies increased, with smaller gains made at the middle and high school levels.

In the 2022-2023 academic year, 198,524 students in Kentucky qualified as chronically absent, which was 29.8% of students, state education officials said.

“We must address the issue of chronically absent students, as their continued absence hinders their educational progress and overall well-being,” Kinney said. “Every child deserves the opportunity for consistent attendance and a chance to thrive in the classroom. It is crucial that we work together and find solutions to combat chronic absenteeism.

“If we don’t have students in the classroom or learning remotely, then the chances they are receiving and learning from the instruction is greatly mitigated, even though I don’t have a direct line correlation, I would say that is also impacting their ability to come in and be prepared and test and learn as well,” she said.

The Kentucky Department of Education released a chart showing the bulk of schools and districts in the state received a yellow color coded rating, according to a KDE news release.

Only 128 elementary schools, 33 middle and 24 high schools received the highest, or blue, rating.

The Kentucky School Report Card has new features for the 2022-2023 academic year results because of the continued implementation of a state law from 2020.

The legislation established “status” and “change” as ways to evaluate state indicators, and this will be the first year where change is reported.

In Kentucky’s accountability system, schools are measured on a combination of academic and school-quality indicators and measures.

“Status” represents a school’s performance for the current year, while “change” represents the school’s performance for the current year compared with the previous year. Status and change combine to provide a performance rating for each state indicator, state officials said.

In addition to colors, student test scores were grouped according to the performance levels of novice, apprentice, proficient and distinguished.

Statewide tests were given to more than 634,424 students in grades 3 through 8 and 10 through 11 during the spring of 2023. 1,484 schools in 171 districts were tested.

Graduation rates were up slightly from last year and from before the COVID pandemic, according to the state news release.

ACT scores from high school juniors were slightly up from 18.3 to 18.5, but down from 19.0 in 2018-2019.

Digging into reading, math results

A Herald-Leader analysis of the Kentucky Reporter Card data for 2022-2023 showed:

About 24% of Kentucky’s schools had 50% or more students scoring proficient or distinguished in math.

Laurel County’s Sublimity Elementary School was at the top of the list with 88% of the tested students scoring at the highest levels.

Fayette County’s Scapa At Bluegrass Middle School was also in the top 10 at 80%.

About 8% of schools in the state had 50% or more students scoring novice, the lowest level in math. Among the highest novice testers were several Jefferson County Schools, along with Beaver Creek Elementary in Knott County and Russell Cave Elementary in Fayette County. In Knott County, Beaver Creek Elementary School had 65% of its students test novice in math. In Fayette County, Russell Cave Elementary School had 64% test novice in math.

Statewide, 32% of elementary schools, 18% of middle schools and only 12% of high schools had half or more of its students score proficient or distinguished in math. The elementary school with the highest number of top testers was Sublimity Elementary School in Laurel County; the top middle school, Scapa at Bluegrass in Fayette County; and the top high school, Pikeville High School in Pikeville Independent district.

In math and reading across all grade levels, Sublimity Elementary was the top overall school in the amount of students performing proficient or distinguished.

In reading, 41% of schools had 50% or more of its students scoring proficient or distinguished.

About 3.5% of schools had 50% or more of its students score novice in reading. The 10 schools with the highest share of novice testers were all located in Jefferson County. Most of those low performers were elementary schools.

Statewide, 45% of elementary schools, 38% of middle schools and 34% of high schools had half or more of its students score proficient or distinguished in reading.

The top middle school was Anchorage Independent Public School in Jefferson County with 91% of students testing proficient and distinguished, and the top high school was duPont Manual High in Jefferson County with 84%.

Kentucky is seeing achievement gaps between students of different races and income levels, data shows.

In math scores across elementary schools, for example, 20% of Black students scored proficient or distinguished while 46% of white students saw the same results. In the same category, 32% of economically disadvantaged students scored at the highest levels, compared to 57% of their non-economically disadvantaged peers.

Forty-seven percent of Black high school students scored 50% or higher in the novice category on the reading test, compared to 24% of white students and 37% of Hispanic and Latino students.

Staff writer Linda Blackford contributed to this report.