Kentucky school report cards: What the latest test scores show about JCPS, Kentucky's schools

FRANKFORT, Ky. — Across all of Kentucky’s 171 school districts. Across grade levels. Across subject areas.

State test scores released Tuesday reveal what many education officials already feared: Kentucky's kids aren’t where they should be in school.

The Kentucky Summative Assessment results signal thousands of students are still not performing at levels seen before the COVID-19 pandemic, with less than half of students reading at grade level and even more unable to solve math questions their educators think they should know.

"There aren't going to be any surprises in this data for those that have been working in schools who are already well-aware of the challenges that we have before us," Kentucky Education Commissioner Jason Glass said.

At Jefferson County Public Schools, the state's largest district, disparities remained, with white students more likely than their Black peers to attend one of the schools that are considered top tier by the state. Meanwhile, the number of schools that are considered among the bottom 5% in the state became increasingly concentrated in the county.

Kentucky state assessment test scoresHow did schools fare?

"I'm not expecting any celebrations or parties as a result of test scores," JCPS Superintendent Marty Pollio said. "And nor are we asking for that funeral-type atmosphere.

"It's a benchmark to say, 'Well, we know what we need to do," he added.

More:Subscribe to our education newsletter, The Hall Pass

A snapshot of learning loss

Speaking Monday at the Kentucky Department of Education, Glass said there will be "no quick fix to get students back on track."

"It will take time and resources," he said.

Wealthy, majority-white districts clung to the top of statewide ratings. Those results were reflective of the extra resources more advantaged families were able to employ during pandemic learning, Glass said.

It's another contributing factor to Kentucky's racial and socioeconomic gaps, which pre-existed the pandemic, he said.

"Many of our families didn't have those kinds of supports or students were left on their own to navigate that," Glass said.

Two-thirds of Kentucky’s lowest-performing schools are high-poverty, mostly minority campuses in Jefferson County Public Schools.

Kentucky isn’t alone in seeing educational assessment trend lower. While some states saw their students rebound to pre-pandemic levels, results from national tests show similar slides.

The Class of 2022 posted the lowest average score on the ACT in 30 years, the organization said last week. And the National Assessment of Education Progress, or the NAEP, reported declines in reading and math scores in September.

This year’s scores can’t be directly compared to previous tests because the test itself has changed, state education officials cautioned. The state also changed how each achievement level — novice, basic, proficient and advanced — are defined.

It is unclear how much the declines between now and 2019’s scores are due to the new tests, the pandemic or districts’ decisions to go to virtual instruction.

But the new scores paint a grim picture.

Before the pandemic, about 53% of Kentucky students scored proficient or distinguished on their reading tests — signaling they were where they needed to be. Now, less than half of Kentucky students are reading at grade level.

Meanwhile, a little over one-third of students can solve math problems educators think they should know. Before COVID-19 shuttered schools, that figure was a little over 40%.

High school students fared better than their younger peers, seeing little difference between their performance on the 2019 reading and math tests and the ones offered in spring 2022.

"There may be a lot of expressions of concern that will occur over the next couple of days," Glass said. "But I strongly encourage everybody to calm down, take a breath and get back to work."

As in past years, JCPS got lower average scores than the state as a whole. Less than 30% of students in the district scored proficient or distinguished on this year’s math tests. About 35% of students are reading at grade level, the results show. Persistent double-digit achievement gaps between Black and white students remain.

Despite the declines, JCPS fell around the same spot in district rankings for key tests as it did before the pandemic.

In 2018, JCPS was home to 21 Comprehensive Support and Improvement schools — a federal term for those in the bottom 5% of the state. The number jumped to 36 in 2019.

Several JCPS schools exited CSI status this round, but several new schools joined. Now, JCPS has 34 CSI schools, making up two-thirds of the list statewide.

Another 61 JCPS schools received other federal labels for underserving one or more student groups. Often, schools were dinged for having Black students or those with special needs testing at the same rate as those in the bottom 5% while other students tested higher.

A JCPS spokesman said any CSI school will be considered an “Accelerated Improvement School” in the district, opening it up to additional district help and stipends to lure educators on top of extra state support allocated for CSI schools.

In JCPS, disparities remain

State accountability results once again showed the gulf between the haves and the have nots in JCPS.

In Louisville, a school’s performance and how poor its student body is became more tightly correlated than before COVID-19, a Courier Journal analysis found.

Seven of every 10 JCPS students attend a federally labeled school. One in every 5 JCPS students attends one of the lowest performing schools in Kentucky.

More:Louisville is sacrificing poor schools to ensure its elite magnet programs thrive

Kentucky’s CSI schools became increasingly concentrated in Jefferson County, disproportionately falling on schools serving high-poverty and majority-minority students.

More than 4 of every 5 Black students in JCPS learn at a school deemed underperforming by the state, the data show.

The district’s seven blue-rated schools — the top tier in the state’s new color-coded accountability system — are sought-after magnet schools and elementary schools that serve some of the wealthiest student populations in the district.

White JCPS students are nearly three times more likely to attend a blue-level school than a Black student. In turn, low-income and Black children are disproportionately in red or orange schools — the two lowest ratings.

At a Monday press conference held at JCPS' VanHoose Education Center, Pollio said he did not want to focus on state labels.

"We are essentially saying what are 'good' and 'bad' schools too often based on poverty," he said.

Low-performing schools are doing "some of the greatest work that educators can be doing to meet the needs of our kids," Pollio said.

Focus on the trades paying off

The latest batch of scores brings a glimmer of hope for JCPS: It looks like the district’s recent emphasis on the trades is working.

Nearly 70% of the Class of 2022 graduated from JCPS ready for either college or a career, state data shows. That’s up from just over half in 2019.

The biggest gains came from high schools with Academies of Louisville programs.

Seneca High School, for example, jumped from having 40.6% of its students transition ready in 2019 to having more than three-fourths ready in 2022. Two schools — Doss and Iroquois — more than doubled their readiness ratings from 2019.

JCPS’ transition rate lags slightly behind the state’s, but Kentucky’s largest district saw a much higher growth rate since 2019 than the state as a whole. Most of the academies began in the 2017-18 school year.

JCPS’ Black students are outperforming the state average, with 53.9% of Black seniors in JCPS being deemed college or career ready compared to 50.3% statewide.

The district has cut in half its racial achievement gap for postsecondary readiness over the past five years, Pollio said.

Standardized tests just one measure

Jennifer Forseth, principal-in-training at JCPS' Byck Elementary, doesn’t ignore standardized test scores that often land her school into the bottom 5% of the state.

But, she said Monday, it’s not the only metric she cares about.

“I think it’s impossible to measure the real amount of growth with a standardized test,” she said.

Annual springtime assessments can’t capture how much a child may have grown emotionally that year, Forseth said. And sometimes, students will know the material but will struggle transferring it to the test, leading to lower scores.

Forseth is far from the only educator who takes issue with state test scores — particularly now that results don’t account for the trauma many students faced during the pandemic.

Time and resources

Educators across the state will be met with difficult odds in their quest to boost student achievement.

"We are facing probably the two biggest crises that the education profession has faced in the past 50 years," Pollio said, citing the lingering effects of the pandemic and a nationwide teacher shortage.

Still, districts have some measure of control in how they proceed.

Significantly, how districts choose to spend federal resources could determine how fast their students are able to rebound.

JCPS has spent more than $180 million in federal pandemic relief funds thus far, including $15 million for new technology, $14 million for staff to work longer hours and $5 million to hire extra teachers.

Providing students with high-quality instruction over the years to come "is squarely on our shoulders," Pollio said.

Reach Olivia Krauth at okrauth@courierjournal.com and on Twitter at @oliviakrauth.

SEE YOUR SCHOOL'S SCORES

To see the scores, go to https://data.courier-journal.com/kentucky-schools/

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Kentucky school rankings 2022: What they reveal for JCPS, others