CMS identifies why only 8.2% of students are college- and career-ready in math
Chronic student absenteeism in Charlotte-Mecklenburg high schools likely led to low 2021-22 math scores, according to a progress report presented to the school board Wednesday.
Only 8.2% of students in grades 9-12 who took the Math 1 end-of-course test scored high enough to be considered college and career ready — a 3.7% increase from the prior school year.
But it’s well below the board of education’s goal of 16.5% it set for the end of this school year and the 25% goal by October 2024.
“Last year was getting some traction,” Interim Superintendent Hugh Hattabaugh said about math curriculum designed by the district. “This year I feel very confident that there’s going to be excellent instruction and from talking to principals, that’s taking place. I have confidence we’ll meet that goal of 16.5%”
In the 2021-22 school year, 653 of 7,996 Math 1 test takers in grades 9-12 scored college and career ready; 1,319 students needed to test higher to attain the target of 16.5%.
Hattabaugh said getting teachers “coached up and following the curriculum that is aligned with state standards” will be key to meeting goals.
Strategies to increase scores include improving student attendance, determining if students need extra math help, addressing social and emotional health, more professional development for teachers and emphasizing math instruction in middle school — about 33% of middle school students take Math 1 before entering into high school in any given school year, according to the report.
Those middle school students tend to do better than their high school counterparts. In the 2021-22 year, 58.3% of middle school students that took the Math 1 end-of-year test scored college and career ready.
“Grade 8 math performance leads us to believe this current ninth-grade cohort will be starting in a stronger position than last year’s Math I students in high school,” according to the report.
Hattabaugh added: “We set high expectations for all children no matter who they are, where they’re from, they’re not going to teach down. They expect them to learn the standard. If we don’t do that we won’t increase the scores.”
Chronically absent students
CMS leaders point to students not attending school as a primary reason math scores are low. In the 2021-22 year, 41% of high school students that did not score college and career ready on the Math 1 test were chronically absent. Just 12% of college-and-career-ready students in Math 1 were chronically absent.
Chronic absence refers to students who miss at least 10% of a school year for any reason.
“If we can cut into these student absenteeism rates, there is an opportunity to increase students’ instructional time and access to academic supports, which may raise their performance,” the report stated.
Students absences
CMS has begun to crack down on student chronic absenteeism.
Hattabaugh has re-instituted a policy in place prior to the pandemic: if a student misses 10 days of class for any reason they automatically get an F, regardless of grades or performance.
“We have a make-up session for our high school (students where) they have to come in and make up the seat time to get their grade back,” Hattabaugh said. “It’s a wake-up call.”
Across CMS, more than one in four students, 29%, were chronically absent during last school year, more than twice as high as before the pandemic. The district defines chronic absenteeism as when a student misses at least 10% of days in a school year, which is about 17.5 days for any reason, including excused and unexcused absences.
“We can have the best teachers, the best curriculum, the best resources available to our students, but if they’re not in the seat to receive that information from the teachers and to utilize the various things that we have to support them along the way, then they’re never going to be able to close any gaps they may have with their learning,” said Matthew Hayes, deputy superintendent of academics, in a CMS podcast.
CMS counselors and social workers, among others, are employing strategies that include school attendance messages to increase average daily attendance as well as strategies for individual students, CMS officials said in the report presented Wednesday.
Individual student strategies include phone calls, home visits and daily check-in conversations.
This story was originally published September 29, 2022 at 1:59 PM.
