Kentucky’s improvement in student assessments of reading, math and science in the past 20 years has placed the Commonwealth in a tie for fifth place in a new Harvard University report.
The report is designed to show U.S. progress in closing the international education gap and estimates gains from 1995 to 2009 for the U.S. and 48 other countries. Kentucky showed a 2.7 percent gain from 1992 to 2011 based on results from the National Assessment of Education Progress in fourth- and eighth-grade reading, mathematics and science. The state also tied for third in the greatest percentage reduction of students scoring "below basic" at the fourth-grade level.
