North Carolina Public School Students Make Gains in Test Scores
RALEIGH, N.C. — Officials announced that North Carolina’s public school students made slight performance gains on standardized test scores during the past school year. The proficiency levels are slowly approaching percentages achieved before the COVID-19 pandemic caused the closure of classrooms and transition to remote learning.
The Department of Public Instruction released figures showing that 54.2% of students were proficient on state exams during the 2023-24 school year, compared to 53.6% during the 2022-23 school year, as The News & Observer of Raleigh reported.
The proficiency rate remained below 58.8% during the 2018-19 school year. According to the newspaper, in the first full school year of the pandemic, 2020-21, the rate dropped to just 45.4%.
State educators have stated since 2022 that it may take four or five years to recover from the learning loss during the pandemic fully. “There’s a lot of work that needs to be done,” said state school Superintendent Catherine Truitt as the results were released at the State Board of Education meeting.
In other calculations, more individual schools met growth expectations on state exams, and fewer schools were labeled low-performing. The state uses an A-to-F grading system in schools that is primarily based on proficiency rates. According to a department release, the state’s four-year graduation rate also ticked slightly from 86.5% during the 2022-23 school year to 86.9% this past year.
Schools have been proactive in addressing the learning loss caused by the pandemic, investing hundreds of millions of dollars in learning recovery efforts, including tutoring and after-school and summer programming. While temporary federal funding for these efforts is set to end later this month, the commitment to student success remains unwavering, as reported by WRAL-TV.
According to the station, Tammy Howard, with the Department of Public Instruction’s accountability and testing office, estimated that the state has returned about 97% to pre-pandemic levels. This means that the state is almost back to its educational standards and performance levels before the COVID-19 pandemic, which is a significant achievement.
“While test grades and letter outcomes cannot tell us everything we need to know about school and student success, North Carolina continues to see growth for most grades and subjects,” Howard said in the department’s release. “This is something to be proud of.”
Looking at grade-level tests, the passing rate on the third-grade reading exam was 48.6% during the 2023-24 school year, compared to 47.8% the previous year.
State leaders have expressed optimism about the future, expecting early literacy skills to improve as teachers become more comfortable with new reading instruction training that stresses phonics. The successful completion of 160 hours of training by all of the state’s elementary teachers this year, as reported by The News & Observer, is a significant step towards this goal.
The results were released two months before voters will decide who they want to succeed Truitt as superintendent. Democrat Maurice “Mo” Green and Republican Michele Morrow will be on the ballot. Morrow defeated Truitt in the March primary.
SOURCE: AP News