Youth advocacy data released last month reinforced that Warren and Bowling Green students are bouncing back from COVID-19 learning loss, with room to improve, among kindergarteners, school officials said.

Kentucky KIDS COUNT County Data released Nov. 16 by Kentucky Youth Advocates showed progress across four educational benchmarks: kindergarteners ready to learn, fourth-grade reading proficiency, fourth-grade math proficiency and high school on-time graduation rates.

“It’s just another data point that informs our work, but I think more than anything, it confirms some things we already know,” Bowling Green Independent Superintendent Gary Fields said.

City schools saw a three-point increase in reading proficiency from 2021-22, growing to 47% overall and ranking 75th out of 170 districts. Math scores remained the same at 52% overall, ranking 15th out of 163 districts.

High school on-time graduation within city schools saw a massive increase since 2017-18, going from 89.7% to 98.2%. They now rank 14th among 167 districts.

“That’s been a concerted effort,” Fields said. “We’re graduating kids like never before.”

Warren County schools saw a 1% increase to 45% reading proficiency from 2021-22 to 2022-23, though it remains three points behind the state average. The county ranks 86th among 170 school districts across Kentucky.

County math proficiency saw major gains since 2021-22, jumping five points to 50% and far surpassing Kentucky’s 36% statewide average. It now ranks 20th among 163 districts.

County high school on-time graduation fell from 96.6% in 2017-18 to 95.4% now, though it surpasses the statewide 91.4% average and ranks 48th among 167 districts.

Warren County Schools Assistant Superintendent Sarah Johnson said the county allows some students to take a five-year path for high school. The on-time graduation rate accounting for these students is 96.8%, she said.

Both city and county districts struggled to increase the rate of kindergarteners “ready to learn” since 2017-18. City kindergarteners in 2022-23 showed 50% readiness while county students saw 43% readiness, based on testing done at the start of their kindergarten year.

County schools saw a 5.5-point drop in that time while city schools saw an 11.6-point drop, ranking them 99th and 59th, respectively, out of 170 districts.

Fields and Johnson both said increasing the number of kindergarten-ready students through pre-school education has become a priority for their districts. They added that every student coming into kindergarten would ideally have some pre-school experience.

Fields said the drop in BGISD kindergarten readiness is, in part, because the 2017-18 baseline — 61.6% — was already a high goal to beat and “a bit of an outlier” in the data. In addition, he said parents are struggling to find quality childcare centers after COVID-19.

“That then feeds into high-quality preschool settings,” Fields said. “It’s getting harder and harder to do that.”

He said the work-in-progress vocational center next to Bowling Green High School, which will contain a daycare, can help meet that need, but more needs to be done even beyond schools.

Fields said the district went from two-day to four-day preschool two years ago in the hopes of preparing more students, a move also made by WCPS.

“We feel that (readiness) number is going to start moving up again,” Fields said.

Johnson said the county school’s move to four-day preschool has been “very impactful” though only in its second year.

She added that data like this is roughly a year old and expects “higher numbers for those who have been in our four-day-a-week preschool” next year.

Johnson said the district has begun hosting regular “kindergarten readiness nights” for parents, the next of which will be held Dec. 7, to keep parents of preschool students informed on how to prepare for kindergarten.

The district’s last two years of “KinderReady” Camp, with help from United Way, has helped teach students strategies to be successful once they transition out of preschool, Johnson said. They also utilize the Little Learners Bus, which travels the county to reach out to families of children up to age 5, primarily.

The district also has plans to turn the old Warren Elementary building into a preschool with a capacity of around 600. Johnson said that will likely open fall of 2025.

“We did see a drop (in kindergarten readiness) through COVID-19 and we are working our way back up, but we’re certainly not there yet,” Johnson said. “We won’t be settled until we have 100% of our students kindergarten ready.”

The KIDS COUNT data also reveals youth and family data focusing on economic security, health and family and community across the county, all of which can impact a student’s academic success.

The county as a whole saw major improvements in decreasing teen births, incarcerated youth, children in poverty and low-income families and children in food-insecure households.

Teen births dropped from 18.7 per 1,000 females between 15 and 19 to 15.4, ranking 10th among 120 Kentucky counties. Warren County also has the lowest rate of smoking while pregnant in the state at 6.5%.

Incarcerated youth rates have been roughly cut in half since 2015-17, dropping from 13.4 per 1,000 children between 10- and 19-years to 6.7, with the county ranked 33rd out of 109.

Child poverty rates dropped 2.3 points from 2016 to 2021 and is now 20.4%, ranking Warren 34th of 120 counties. Children in low-income households dropped 7 points between 2012-16 and 2017-21 to 43%, ranking 37th of 120 counties.

Children in food-insecure households dropped from 15.9% in 2019 to 13.7% in 2021, ranking 31st out of 117 counties.

The county as a whole is still struggling with a high rental cost burden, the number of children under 19 without health insurance, children in foster care and children exiting foster care to reunification and births to mothers without a high school degree.

Warren County saw a 1.7% increase from 2014-16 to 2019-21 in births to mothers without high school degrees, rising to 15% and ranking the county 75th out of 120.

Children in foster care grew between 2015-17 and 2020-22 from 63.6 children per 1,000 between zero and 17 to 65.1, ranking Warren County 88th of 120.

Children exiting foster care to reunification, when children return to their birth parents, decreased from 37% from 2015-17 to 27% in 2020-22, ranking the county 84th out of 110.

The high rental cost burden grew slightly from 2012-16 to 2017-2021, increasing one point from 2012-16 to 2017-21. Warren County ranks 83rd of 117 counties.