Fewer than half of NC students passed latest state reading exam. Here’s what it means
The majority of North Carolina elementary and middle school students failed the latest state end-of-grade reading exams, based on new test standards adopted Thursday.
The State Board of Education approved the “cut scores” that determine what’s considered to be passing on the revised reading tests given in the 2020-21 school year. The decision means that the majority of students in grades three through eight will receive scores marking them as not proficient in reading.
The test results come amid a school year where education was disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, with many students seeing only limited in-person instruction. State education leaders are promising a more detailed review of the impact that COVID-19 has had on student learning loss.
“We will have our deeper conversation about what the data from that assessment tells us about student achievement last year when we receive the Learning Loss Restart report in a future meeting,” state board member Jill Camnitz said Wednesday.
The results show reading exam proficiency rates of 44% in third grade, 45.1% in fourth grade, 42.4% in fifth grade, 45.4% in sixth grade, 46.8% in seventh grade and 48.3% in eighth grade.
Passing rates lower this year
Each school year, the federal government requires states to test students in reading, math and science to assess student and school academic performance. The exams were waived for the 2019-20 school year but were required for the most recent school year.
The new reading passing rates are much lower than in the 2018-19 school year, the last time that the state exams were given before this year. But education officials said you can’t compare this year’s reading scores to prior years due to the revisions.
Still, the results do offer further confirmation that academic performance in the 2020-21 school year will likely be much lower than in previous years.
State end-of-course exams given to high school students in the fall semester had shown that the majority didn’t pass. Large numbers of K-12 students statewide are attending summer school programs to try to deal with learning loss.
Complete state test results will be released at the September state board meeting.
Wake County school officials have cautioned that the results may be “less accurate” on a school and district level due to all the students who opted out this year . More students than normal statewide opted not to take the exams during the pandemic due to the requirement that the exams had to be taken in-person.
It’s unclear how many students opted out. Wake school officials say there was no penalty for skipping the end-of-grade exams in elementary and middle school. Also, many school districts changed their policies so that high school end-of-course exams would not lower a student’s grade in the course.
Not being judged on one exam
Under the revised reading exams, students will be marked in one of four levels: not proficient, level 3 for sufficient understanding of the content, level 4 for thorough understanding and level 5 for comprehensive understanding.
A score in level 4 and 5 is supposed to show that a student is on track for career and college.. The latest reading results show only between a quarter and 30% of the students who took the tests at each grade were at level 4 of 5.
Schools will soon mail reading test scores to parents. Maureen Stover, a State Board of Education teacher advisor, asked if there’s a way to change the phrasing so that students understand that a single poor test score doesn’t indicate they will not be successful in college.
“This is one test that a student takes on one day and that does not dictate whether or not they’re really ready to go to college,” Stover said.
Tammy Howard, director of accountability services at the state Department of Public Instruction, said it’s a federal requirement to tell parents if their students scored at a level showing college readiness. But she said they will continue to look for ways to improve the wording.
Reading scores are ‘defensible’
Whenever the state revises its exams, it brings in a team of educators to work on setting the standards, including the scores for passing the tests.
Howard said the team of 86 educators recommended cut scores based on what students can do with respect to the state standards.
Howard cited the comments of Gregory Cizek, a testing expert who DPI brought in to evaluate the process used for setting the new reading test standards.
“Policymakers can have confidence that the recommendations from the standard setting activity are based on sound procedures producing credible, defensible, and educationally useful results,” Cizek said.
Wake school officials have also said that parents can trust the individual test results for their child.
This story was originally published August 5, 2021 at 2:54 PM with the headline "Fewer than half of NC students passed latest state reading exam. Here’s what it means."
