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Misread and misled: Is student reading really improving in Jefferson County?

By Richard G. Innes

A story about World War I claims the British government kept three sets of statistics on the incredible number of casualties. The first set was meant to fool the enemy. The second tried to fool the public. The last tried to fool itself.

It looks like history might repeat itself. This time it’s in Jefferson County Public Schools, Kentucky’s largest public-school district.

The Every1Reads Web site reports that an incredibly large percentage of Jefferson County’s students are reading “At or Above Grade Level.”

Figure1

Graph on Every1Reads Web Site showing percentage of students reading ‘At or Above Grade Level’

Is this really accurate?

The facts

• An “At or Above Grade Level” scoring scheme exists only in the imagination of Jefferson County educators. Kentucky’s state assessment program does not grade that way. Rather, the scoring scale used for reading in Kentucky includes eight grades: “Novice Non-performance” (essentially, the student didn’t answer any questions); “Novice-medium;” “Novice-high;” “Apprentice-low;” “Apprentice-medium;” “Apprentice-high;” “Proficient” and “Distinguished.”

• While the state does not define an “At or Above Grade Level” score, it’s clear that the state considers only students scoring “Proficient” or “Distinguished” to be doing acceptable work.

• The county concocted a much lower standard for itself. In an attempt to make itself look good, it determined that any “Apprentice” level score on the state assessments, even “Apprentice-low,” is “At or Above Grade Level” work. This makes a mockery of statewide standards.

How JCPS really performs

The Kentucky Department of Education’s 2006 Kentucky Performance Report for Jefferson County shows much lower reading proficiency rates (students rated “Proficient” plus those rated “Distinguished”) for Jefferson County schools as shown in Table 1. The table also includes a column with the overall “simple average” reading rates throughout all school levels to correspond to the way the Every1Reads data is presented.

The data by school level from Table 1 is plotted in Figure 2.

Even a cursory inspection of Figure 2 shows that recent trends in reading proficiency in Jefferson County schools remain nearly flat at the critical elementary school level. The current rate of progress requires decades before county elementary-school proficiency gets close to 100 percent. Progress is a bit faster for higher-level schools, but current proficiency levels are lower than in the elementary schools.

The proposition that on average, 87.1 percent of the students in the county read on grade level in 2006 is an illusion — even when inflated CATS scores are considered. (Note: CATS is also a watered-down assessment. Kentucky’s statewide CATS reading proficiency rates for both fourth and eighth grades are notably higher than the state’s proficiency rates on the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress, called the NAEP.)

The county’s projection of 100 percent reading proficiency for 2008 shown on the Every1Reads graph also represents pure fantasy. Even using Jefferson County’s inflated data, the Every1Reads graph shows proficiency only went from 85.6 percent in 2004 to 87.1 percent in 2006. The district actually lost ground between 2005 and 2006. So far, from 2004 to 2006, there has been only a 1.5-percent increase in the undemanding “At or Above Grade Level” results.

Only two years of data remain left to report until 2008. At the current rate of progress, only about 88.6 percent of Jefferson County’s students will meet the district’s weak “At or Above Grade Level” goal. A projection of 100 percent represents wishful thinking.

More important, with only about one out of two county students currently achieving reading proficiency even on the relatively easy CATS assessments, the district clearly needs to accomplish a lot more.

Will CATS get watered down again?

On June 29, 2007, the state education department announced that Ken Draut, director of the Planning Unit for Jefferson County Public Schools, had been appointed to the post of associate commissioner for the department’s Office of Assessment and Accountability.

A department news release stated that in his former position, Draut was responsible for “. . . managing planning and evaluation programs for the school district and providing analysis of assessment and accountability policies.” It seems Draut became intimately involved with creating the “At or Above Grade Level” fabrication.

Despite the fact that the reading proficiency rates in CATS are much higher than the rates reported by the respected NAEP, does Draut think CATS scoring is too demanding? What will happen now that he runs the CATS program?

Creating indefensible, watered-down education standards isn’t the way to make improvements for students. Like days of old in the British Home Office, it might make some Jefferson County bureaucrats feel good, but Kentucky’s kids will continue to fail to read as well as they should.

— Richard G. Innes is an education analyst for the Bluegrass Institute, Kentucky’s free-market think tank (www.bipps.org).

The Bluegrass Institute is an independent research and educational institution offering free-market solutions to Kentucky's most pressing problems.

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