McCrory signs bill to extend more lenient school performance grading scale

North Carolina schools will have their performance graded under a more lenient scale for a second year under a bill signed into law by Gov. Pat McCrory this week.

For the first time this year, each public school in the state was assigned a letter grade, “A” through “F,” based primarily on student standardized test scores. Eighty percent of the grade was based on the percentage of students proficient in reading and math, and 20 percent was based on whether students’ scores were meeting growth targets.

The final numbers became a score much like students receive on tests. But in the first year, the letters were assigned on a 15-point scale – meaning scores between 85 and 100 made an “A,” between 70 and 84 earned a “B,” and so on.

In the second year, the grades were supposed to move on a tougher 10 point scale.

In Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, this would have meant that the district would have gone from nearly half of schools earning “A” or “B” would move to more than half “D” or “F.”

House Bill 358 was introduced in March to extend the 15-point scale. Some lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have pushed for more changes to the school letter grades process, including making the formula used to determine grades focus more on student improvement.

Critics of school letter grades have said they show little more than which schools are affluent and which are not.

This story was originally published May 15, 2015 at 1:27 PM with the headline "McCrory signs bill to extend more lenient school performance grading scale."