Kentucky Releases Results from Common Core Aligned Assessments

Student preparedness, district infrastructure, and anticipating public reaction are frequent points of discussion amongst many school districts across the country looking to implement aligned assessments to the Common Core State Standards. Last Friday, the wait was over for Kentucky when they became the first state to release test scores explicitly tied to the Common Core. While student test scores have dropped, the two news stories highlighted below provide a sense of how Kentucky has worked to prepare students, educators, and their broader stakeholders for the new assessments – and their impact.

The Education Week article “Scores Drop on Ky.’s Common Core-Aligned Tests” highlights that “the drop in Kentucky’s scores conform to what state education officials had expected: that students in grades 3-8 taking the new, more-rigorous Kentucky Performance Rating of Education Progress, or K-PREP, would not be able to reach their achievement levels of prior years.” The article also discusses the extensive work that the Kentucky Department of Education, the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, and the Kentucky Parent Teacher Associations have worked to inform stakeholders through a variety of outreach efforts.

In the Cincinnati Enquirer article “Kentucky school test scores released” a Kentucky Department of Education spokeswoman speaks directly to the new assessments and the value that they provide by saying, “we have changed the way Kentucky presents information about how well its schools and districts are doing. This gives schools and districts almost a road map so they can look at various things and make improvements. It’s not just student achievement on tests but achievement gaps between groups of kids, graduation rates and student academic growth from one year to the next. Those components will help (educators) plot a course so they can improve after they see the scores.”