Kentucky has a serious problem with its public education system. It’s much more fundamental than disagreements about Critical Race Theory, school shutdowns, and student masking. Very simply, astonishingly high numbers of Bluegrass State students aren’t being taught to read at anything close to an acceptable level.
Kentucky’s reading problem is significant. Based on 2019 results from the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) and 2019 end-of-year enrollment figures for the state’s public school system, I estimate at least 64,000 students just in Kindergarten to Grade 3 are essentially very weak to non-readers. Across the entire Kindergarten to Grade 12 enrollment, about 200,000 Bluegrass State students lack even a partial mastery of reading. That’s a whole lot of kids set to exit the school system to become major burdens in adult life for both themselves and for all of society.
So, what’s going on? Many Kentucky teachers haven’t been properly prepared to teach reading in accordance with what science shows works best, neither in their education school programs nor in follow-on professional development.
A 2020 report from the National Council on Teacher Quality says that among the five essential elements in strong reading programs – phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension – on average, Kentucky’s college-based teacher preparation programs only cover three.
Furthermore, questions are also being raised about whether several reading programs used in Kentucky’s Read to Achieve remedial program follow what science shows works best.
Research from the National Reading Panel and fMRI-based brain activity studies as well as evidence in practice – including in a handful of schools here in Kentucky – shows that when students get proper instruction, many avoid any need for remedial activities. Other students more challenged by reading also do better when first exposed to a proper start and then given special assistance that employs what really works.
After receiving special training in proper reading instruction from an Elgin Children’s Foundation program, students in Kentucky’s Goose Rock Elementary School in Clay County shot from just 23.1% proficiency in Grade 3 KPREP reading in 2012 to an astonishing 89.7% proficiency rate by 2019. That’s a higher proficiency rate than all of the upper-scale northern Kentucky public elementary schools posted.
Several other Clay County schools in Elgin’s program posted dramatically high reading proficiency rates in 2019, as well.
So, Kentucky’s current, very serious shortcomings with reading instruction don’t have to remain this way.
By the way, poverty is no excuse. Goose Rock achieved its recent results despite an 85% school lunch eligibility rate.
What’s clearly needed is better training for our teachers about what science shows works best for teaching students how to read.
The good news is that two pieces of legislation currently in the hopper, Senate Bill 9 and House Bill 226, establish programs to do what the Bluegrass State needs; getting our state on a better track by eventually allowing every teacher access to the training needed to do the job the way Elgin did in Clay County.
The bills have a number of features, but key in both is a strong focus on following the science, both in teacher preparation programs and in follow-on teacher professional development.
To enhance follow-on training, both bills establish a Teacher Academy to support working teachers. Mississippi, which has used a similar program since 2015, showed the most remarkable reading improvement of all on the 2019 NAEP, moving ahead of Kentucky in fourth-grade reading performance for both white and Black students. Yes – Mississippi.
So, Kentucky does have a reading problem, but it doesn’t have to be this way – if the right policies are adopted.
Richard G. Innes is an education analyst for the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, Kentucky’s free-market think tank. Reach him at dinnes@freedomkentucky.com.