The National Association of Educational Progress (NAEP) administers standardized assessments to students across the United States every two years. The test assesses students’ knowledge and skills in math and reading. NAEP scores are valuable indicators of student performance compared to schools within Kentucky and across the nation. The data below pertains to students enrolled in public schools.
The average scores for students in both JCPS and other public school districts in Kentucky have remained fairly constant since 2012. JCPS scores are typically 5 to 10 points below the statewide average. According to the NAEP, the average JCPS score is above the basic level but below proficiency. The math exam given to 4th graders is out of 500 points.
White students in JCPS usually perform at the same level as their Kentucky peers. Both within JCPS and across Kentucky, Black students continue to lag behind their peers. As of 2017, Black students in Kentucky are performing slightly better than their JCPS peers.
LSince 2009, males and females attending JCPS schools have received lower NAEP math scores than their public school Kentucky counterparts. Within JCPS, males slightly outperform females.
Publics school students from families with higher incomes receive higher NEAP math scores than their counterparts eligible for free or reduced lunch. JCPS and KY students not on free or reduced lunch receive about the same NAEP math schores. JCPS students qualifying for free or reduced lunch are 8 points behind their KY counterparts.
For each indicator, Greater Louisville Project assigns cities into one of three groups (high-performing, middle-of-the-pack, and low-performing) based on how they compare to other cities. The assignment is based on how cities naturally cluster on that indicator. Sometimes, the differences between cities are very small, and the difference between a city ranked 5th and 6th could simply be a matter of the sampling error that arises from using survey data. Thus, rather than always make a division that declares the top 5 to be the top tier, we use a natural breaks algorithm to look for a cluster of cities that is outperforming the rest, a cluster that is about average, and a cluster that is lagging. This clustering gives us a better indication of where Louisville is thriving and where Louisville has room to learn from cities that are doing better.
Z-scores (or standardization) is a way to combine data with different units of measurement into a single index. The z-score is a measure of how far away a city (or census tract, etc.) is from the average city. In order to be comparable across different units of measurement, the z-score is the distance from the mean measured in standard deviations (e.g. if Louisville has a z-score of 1 it means Louisville is 1 standard deviation above the mean of its peer cities).
Data from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's County Health Rankings use z-scores and all z-scores are relative to the mean of Louisville's peer cities. (On the County Health Rankings site z-scores are relative to all the counties in each state - thus z-scores reported by GLP will be different, because we are using a different reference group). The Greater Louisville Project also uses z-scores in our multidimensional poverty index, which compares each census tract to the mean of all census tracts in Louisville.
