The University of Kentucky may have lost the NCAA tournament, but Kentuckians can still take heart in their K–12 schools’ promising non-athletic gains. According to this new report, the Bluegrass State’s ACT scores have shot up since it began to implement the Common Core in 2011–12.
Using data from the Kentucky Department of Education, the study compared ACT scores for three cohorts of students who entered eighth grade between the 2007–08 and 2009–10 school years. The first group took the ACT—a state requirement for all eleventh graders—in 2010–11, immediately prior to CCSS implementation. They were therefore not formally exposed to instruction under the new standards. Cohorts two and three took the ACT in 2011–11 and 2012–13, after the introduction of CCSS-aligned curricula. They earned composite scores that were 0.18 and 0.25 points higher, respectively, relative to first cohort. The study authors report this gain as roughly equivalent to three months of additional learning.
The report rightly cautions against reading too much into these early findings. The short interval between Common Core implementation and the cohorts’ ACT scores reduces the effect the standards could have on student achievement. The authors also note that it is not clear whether the scoring gains could have been attributed to other systemic changes, such as new testing, accountability, and teacher evaluation models that were introduced concurrently with Common Core. Nevertheless, considering that Kentucky’s former state standards for math and English language arts both received a D rating in our State of State Standards report, the improving ACT results from Kentucky may be a sign of better things to come for more states across the nation.
SOURCE: Zeyu Xu and Kennan Cepa, “Getting College and Career Ready During State Transition Toward the Common Core State Standards,” American Institutes for Research (April 2015).
