| The West Virginia school system has gone to reporting progress or improvement of state students using WESTEST-2, which can easily deflect what is happening with education.
There remains startling statistics about student performance in the state's schools, according to WV KIDS COUNT.
According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation's 2013 KIDS COUNT® Data Book, West Virginia's education system ranks 47th (or 4th worst) in the nation for the second straight year.
Nearly three out of four West Virginia 4th graders (73%) are not proficient in reading, and nearly two out of three of the state's three- and four-year-olds (64%) are not enrolled in a pre-school program.
West Virginia's 8th grade math proficiency score has improved 3 percent since 2005, but nearly 4 out of 5 of the state's 8th graders (79%) are not proficient, which puts West Virginia at 48th among the 50 states for this indicator.
Joining West Virginia in the bottom five for education are Arizona, Mississippi, New Mexico and Nevada.
West Virginia fared significantly better in the report's children's health indicators with a national ranking of 27th, which is up from 31st in the nation last year.
The state ranks 33rd in the economic well-being for children and 34th in family and community measures, and its overall national rank is 37th out of 50.
"Over the past two decades, West Virginia has made dramatic improvements in children's health by focusing on policies we know will improve health outcomes, like expanded access to insurance and good prenatal care," said Margie Hale Executive Director of KIDS COUNT.
"We must devote that same attention to improving our bottom-five ranking in education. One of the reasons our ranking is so low is our lack of quality programs for three-year-olds. We have already made some important strides with our universal pre-kindergarten (Pre-k) program for four-year-olds," said Hale.
"But, research tells us, to get the full benefit of pre-school education, we also must improve the quality and expand the capacity of programs that serve three-year-olds," Hale said.
As the nation's economy recovers, America's children are showing some signs of improvement despite an ever-growing poverty rate, according to new data in the Annie E. Casey Foundation's KIDS COUNT® Data Book.
Nationally, children continue to progress in education and health but have gained only incremental steps in their economic well-being since 2010, falling short of where they stood before the recession.
From roughly 2005 to 2011, the teen birth rate dropped by 15 percent to a historic low. However, in West Virginia the teen birth rate during the same period increased from 43 per thousand to 45 per thousand, which is 43rd among the 50 states.
Nationally, the rate of high school students not graduating in four years saw an almost 20 percent decline, as did the child and teen death rate; and the percentage of children without health insurance decreased by 30 percent.
In 2011, the child poverty rate stood at 23 percent, or 16.4 million children - an increase of 3 million since 2005.
In West Virginia, 26 percent of all kids live in poverty (38th in the nation), and that percentage has not changed since 2005.
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