Since the start of the pandemic, test scores for most grades and subjects in North Carolina public schools have been record lows. However, data released last week by the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) show that kids are still doing better.
Yesterday, the State Board of Education was shown the test results for the 2023–24 school year. They show that 54.2% of students passed the tests, which is up from 53.6% in the 2022–23 school year.
Still, general performance is lower than it was before the pandemic in 2018–19. However, students have made progress every year for the last three years. Dr. Tammy Howard, DPI’s Senior Director of Accountability and Testing, told the Board that the agency is working with schools to make sure that progress is kept up.
Howard said, “The data is a place to look to see where we are and what happened in 2024… and then to focus on the real purpose of testing and accountability, which is to improve schools and raise student achievement.”
Kids in North Carolina are called “Grade Level Proficient” (GLP) if they get a Level 3 or higher on their end-of-course and end-of-grade tests. The Career and College Readiness (CCR) standard is met by students who get a Level 4 or higher.
Howard showed the Board progress on both items in a presentation on Wednesday.
Here is Howard’s talk about how to recover from the pandemic in math, science, and end-of-grade courses, broken down by grade level. Keep in mind that scores for most topics and grade levels are getting close to what they were before the pandemic.
Scores in English II are the same as they were before the pandemic. The results are better in NC Math 3 than they were before the pandemic.
Howard did say, though, that the best rate of success is still just over 60%.
“We just want to make it clear that we’re not saying that we are 100% to where we all want to be with student achievement,” she said. “That line at the top, that 100%, is very clear to us.” “But if we go back to 2019 and look at grade level proficiency, we can see that we are very close to that level of performance.”
Here is a look at how well you can read. The grades all went up from 2022 to 2023, except for fourth and seventh grade.
In a press release from the DPI, Truitt asked for more reading and writing help for older kids.
“As a state, we have put a huge amount of time and effort into using the science of reading to teach our elementary school students important literacy skills,” she said. We focus on elementary kids from kindergarten to third grade, but many of our literacy supports stop working after that. This year’s data shows that this is not enough.
“We need to put money into similar, developmentally appropriate professional development for high school and middle school teachers as well,” Truitt said. “This was an important part of our legislative agenda for the short session, and the legislature needs to think about it again during the long session.”