New NC test scores show improvement, but schools are still below pre-pandemic scores
North Carolina’s student test scores continue to rise after hitting rock bottom during the pandemic. But performance still remains below pre-pandemic levels.
New statewide test scores released at Wednesday’s State Board of Education meeting show that 53.6% of students were proficient on state exams during the 2022-23 school year. That’s up from 51.2% passing in the 2021-22 school year and the 45.4% proficiency rate in the 2020-21 school year.
Other signs of improvement include an uptick in the graduation rate, more schools meeting academic growth targets, fewer schools being labeled as low-performing and fewer schools receiving D or F performance grades.
“We’re seeing progress back toward our pre-COVID levels,” said Tammy Howard, senior director of the state Department of Public Instruction’s Office of Accountability and Testing. “We may not be 100% back to where we were, but there’s definite progress being seen here.”
Recovery will take more time
But overall, the passing rate is still below the 58.8% mark from the 2018-19 school year. There are also far more low-performing schools than there were before the pandemic.
Passing rates remain below pre-pandemic levels for every state exam, with the exception of the Math 3 exam given in high school.
Schools across the nation are still recovering from widespread learning losses that resulted from students receiving a limited amount of in-person instruction in the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years..
State education officials have repeatedly warned that the recovery will take time. State Superintendent Catherine Truitt told the state board that they’re only in the second year of a multi-year recovery effort.
“We’ve now seen two consecutive years of gains that were greater than any of the several years preceding the pandemic losses, when year-to-year changes in average scores were generally flat, or in some cases, declining,” Truitt said in a news release. “Students and schools still have a way to go to catch up, but we have good reason to think that progress will continue.”
Fewer D and F schools
The annual release of test scores also comes with a state-mandated A through F letter grade given to public schools. The school grades are based 80% on passing rates on exams and 20% on student growth on the tests.
The percentage of schools with A and B grades was 27%, up from 23% the prior year. But it’s down from 37% in the 2018-19 school year.
The percentage of schools with D and F grades dropped to 35% after being at 42% the prior year. It had been only at 22% in the 2018-19 school year.
School performance grades unfair?
On average, high-poverty schools have lower performance grades than more affluent schools. Critics complain the grades required by state lawmakers stigmatize high-poverty schools.
Truitt has been leading an effort to revise the performance grading system to potentially include additional measures such as student attendance and school climate.
It would require state legislative approval to change the school accountability formula.
State board chair Eric Davis said the school performance grades have been wrongly used for too long to label some schools as being failures.
“But the reality is that when parents look at our schools to determine where to send their children, what they see first and foremost are the school performance grades,” Davis said during the board meeting. “They’re having a damaging impact upon our students’ education and our parents’ choices, and we need to change that.”
More schools meet growth targets
One of the complaints about the A-F grading system is that it doesn’t do enough to recognize growth on state exams.
The new state data shows 72% of schools met or exceeded growth on last year’s state exams. That’s only slightly less than the 73% of schools meeting targets in 2018-19.
In North Carolina, a school is labeled as low-performing if it has a D or F grade and did not exceed growth on the exams.
Last school year, 804 schools were identified as low-performing, or 32% of schools statewide. That’s down from 864 schools the prior year, when 34% received the low-performing designation..
There were 488 low-performing schools in 2018-19.
The new state data can also be found online at https://tinyurl.com/yck72hd6.
Graduation rate up
The state’s graduation rate went up after having dropped the past two years.
The four-year high school graduation rate increased to 86.4%, up from 86.2% the prior year. The graduation rate was 87.6% in the 2019-20 school year.
The state’s graduation rate is higher than when it was reported for the first time at 68.3% for the Class of 2006. But the steady increase had stopped amid the pandemic.
Rebounding from learning loss
The new round of test results comes after state education officials have been talking about how schools are rebounding from the learning losses.
In April, DPI presented a report to state lawmakers showing that students in nearly every subject made academic gains in the 2021-22 school year. This comes after falling behind the prior year.
In some cases, the learning recovery time from the 2020-21 school year had been cut in half by the end of last school year.
An earlier DPI analysis found that all students representing different demographics suffered pandemic learning loss. Students were months behind, and in some cases more than a year behind, in math and reading at the end of the 2020-21 school year.
Also in August, DPI presented data showing more students in kindergarten through third grade are on track on reading than a year ago. The data was based on in-class literacy assessments given to students at the beginning, middle and end of the school year.
Truitt gave a large part of the credit for the gains to the new LETRS science of reading training.
LETRS, which stands for “Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling,” stresses phonics when teaching students how to read. The state’s 44,000 elementary teachers have to complete the 160 hours of training by 2024.
“As more early-grades teachers adopt literacy instruction grounded in the science of reading, students will be stronger readers as they progress through elementary school and into middle school,” Truitt said. “We’re going to see continued improvement in those test scores and others.”
Despite those early literacy gains, the new results released on Wednesday show only 47.8% of third-grade students passed the state’s end-of-grade reading exam in 2023. Truitt has said gains may be smaller for those students because they missed in-person classes for parts of kindergarten and first grade during the pandemic.
Call for Leandro funding
Davis, the board chair, said the results highlight the need to adopt the Leandro plan. The seven-step plan was developed by an education consultant to try to provide every students with highly qualified teachers and principals.
In November, the N.C. Supreme Court ordered that state funding be provided to carry out the Leandro plan. The case is in limbo after the Supreme Court’s new GOP majority blocked the money transfer.
“What this report shows is that we need that comprehensive plan implemented rapidly,” Davis said.
Find your district or school in our searchable database.
This story was originally published September 6, 2023 at 10:49 AM with the headline "New NC test scores show improvement, but schools are still below pre-pandemic scores."
