Kentucky: 2025 Assessment Results
ELA, math inch up in fourth year of Kentucky Summative Assessment
2025 State Test Score Results Data Series
Welcome! This newsletter is published by the Education Data Center and is designed to provide updates on 2025 state assessment data. We’re sharing high-level insights on ELA and math state summative assessment outcomes for students in grades 3-8. You can expect to find the following for each state:
Overall ELA and math achievement trends;
ELA and math results disaggregated by achievement level;
Maps of ELA and math results by district or county in 2025;
Top-performing school districts in ELA and math in 2025; and
ELA and math results by race/ethnicity in 2025.
We have included additional information about the state assessment at the end of this post, for reference.
Update! You can now find all available 2025 assessment data on the EDC’s website here. You can also try using Zelma, EDC’s AI assistant, to ask questions about the data for your state of interest.
Trends Over Time
Results from the 2025 Kentucky Summative Assessment (KSA) show improvements in both ELA and math compared to the prior three years of this assessment. Because the state launched the KSA in 2022, we cannot fully compare to pre-pandemic levels of achievement; we include trend lines in Figure 1 below for reference only.
ELA: Approximately 48% of students in grades 3-8 reached proficiency in 2025, rising above 47% in 2024.
Math: Approximately 42% of students reached proficiency in 2025, above 41% in 2024.
The Kentucky Department of Education reported that it supported districts in adopting high-quality instructional resources (HQIRs) and in providing state literacy coaching specialists to educators this past school year. In addition,
“Other KDE efforts to improve literacy in Kentucky include improved alignment to the science of reading for preservice teachers in educator preparation programs, the establishment of the Kentucky Early Literacy Leadership Network, competitive grants for educators to support literacy and the new Kentucky Reading Research Center.
KDE and various partners have initiated numerous efforts to advance access to high-quality numeracy instruction, per the Kentucky Numeracy Counts Act. The Kentucky Center for Mathematics’ K-5 Numeracy Counts Academy and the Partnership Institute for Math and Science Education Reform’s (PIMSER’s) Numeracy Counts Administrator Academy began in 2025, along with other professional development opportunities for educators and administrators…”
Figure 1. ELA and Math Achievement Trends
Figure 2. Kentucky Results by Achievement Level
A Closer Look at 2025
Figure 3. 2025 ELA Proficiency by School District
Figure 4. 2025 Math Proficiency by School District
Kentucky School District Spotlight
Figure 5. Top-Performing School Districts in 2025 in ELA and Math
Results by Race/Ethnicity in 2025
Figure 6. Proficiency by Race/Ethnicity in 2025 in ELA and Math
Kentucky State Assessment Background
Please see below for additional information on the state assessment data used for this summary. The data represent ELA and math outcomes for students in Grades 3-8 only.
Assessment Name: Kentucky Summative Assessment (KSA; 2022-2025); K-PREP Assessment (2012-2021)
Years Included in Analysis: 2012 - 2025
Additional Information: More information on the KSA can be found here: https://www.education.ky.gov/AA/Assessments/Pages/KentuckySummativeAssessment-.aspx. The Kentucky School Report Card Suite can be found here: https://reportcard.kyschools.us/home.
Data presented here are specific to this state’s assessment and are not comparable to assessments administered by other states. For questions, please reach out to info@eddatacenter.org.
Really solid presentation of the data! The connection between HQIRs and literacy coaching with those modest but consistent gains is worth unpacking. Would be interesting to see wether the districts adopting science-of-reading aligned practices earlier showed stronger uptick than others.