Local school systems get report cards

Like its counterpart system, Clinton City Schools has shown some improvements in overall student achievement during the 2023-24 school year, but one school — Sampson Middle — was designated as low-performing and another — Clinton High — did not meet expected growth

The results provided by the state Department of Public Instruction, were discussed during the Board of Education’s meeting last week.

Sheryl Kimbro, director of testing and accountability, presented the data. Many topics were covered in her presentation which showcased that the city system’s School Performance Grades consisted of four C’s and one D.

LC Kerr, Butler Avenue and Sunset Avenue each were given C’s and met growth. Clinton High also was given a C, but did not meet growth. Sampson Middle School had the only D grade, and did not meet growth; it was designated by the state as a low-performing school.

“First we’ll talk about accountability and reporting,” Kimbro said. “Accountability means that the data that we have has all of the business rules applied, which is students that have been enrolled at their school for more than half of the semester, for semester courses, and for more than half of the year for year -ong courses. For our students that are newcomers to the states, that being this is their first year in the United States, their scores are not factored with the school performance grades.

She continued, “When we talk about reporting numbers, that’s everybody who tested, and the North Carolina school report card uses those reporting numbers. That includes every student that takes a test; there are no business rules applied.”

Kimbro explained the data for college and career readiness. “That’s your levels four and five, and that’s usually what our federal designations come from. Then there’s GLP grade level proficiency, that is your levels three, four and five scores. Our school performance grades use the GLP and that’s what I’ve used for the rest of the presentation.”

The student achievement data for the 2023-24 school year is based on analysis of all end-of- grade (EOG) and end-of-course (EOC) tests, which are aligned to the North Carolina Standard Course of Studying English Language Arts (Reading) and Mathematics and the Essential Standards in Science for all public schools in North Carolina, according to the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI).

The data provides the percentage of students who scored at Level 3 and above GLP, at Level 4 and above CCR college and career readiness at each academic achievement level. There are four achievement levels for state testing: not proficient, 3, 4 and 5, with 5 representing the greatest mastery of the subject matter.

The actual School Performance Grades, themselves, are based on student achievement (80 percent), and growth (20 percent.) The grades themselves are listed from (A-F) and have been reported for all schools since the 2013-14 school year. The designations are set on a 15-point scale as follows — A (85-100), B (70-84), C (55-69), D (40-54) and F (39 or less).

When breaking down the CCS School Performance Grades achievement scores at LCK, BAS and SAS, were each 53.6 (42.9 percent) and growth score was 78.7 (15.7 percent) bring their grade to 68.8 percent (68), a C. CCS had an achievement score of 59 (47.2 percent), a growth score of 56.3 (11.3 percent) bringing their grade to 68.6 percent (68), also a C, which did not meet growth. SMS scored a D with an achievement score of 43.8 (35.1 percent) and a growth score of 54 (10.8 percent) bring the total to 46.9 percent a 48.

Kimbro’s data also showed the comparison of CCS from the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school term for reading, math and science GLPs.

For reading GLP, at 3rd grade numbers steadily increased going from 39.4 percent to 40 percent, for 4th grade, numbers stayed the same at 44.6 percent, the 5th numbers were also up at 39.4 percent to 40.4 percent. The data showed numbers were down for 6th grade at 39.7 percent to 38.5 percent. The 7th grade numbers remain the same at 34.7 percent, 8th grade also dropped slightly from 49.3 percent to 48.3 percent and English 2 score held at 44.3 percent.

Over on math GLP, for 3rd grade the numbers are up from 64.8 percent to 65.1 percent, 4th maintained at 51.3 percent, 5th went up a little 68.8 percent to 68.9 percent, 6th was constant at 38.2 percent, 7th saw a minor decrease from 43.9 percent to 43.2 percent, 8th saw a noticeable dip from 47.3 percent to 43.9 percent, Math 1 for 9-12 increased from 25 percent to 26.7 percent and Math 3 was up from 36.8 percent to 37.6 percent.

Science GLP included 5th which inched up from 67.4 percent to 67.6 percent, 8th fell a bit from 68.1 percent to 67.8 percent and biology (BIO) went from 41.4 percent to 41.8 percent.

Kimbro also highlighted the data from ACT proficiency for 11th grade students which was based on the number of students in the 11th-grade from the March data collection. That included he number of 11th graders that meet the UNC minimum composite score of 19. Extend 1 students were not included in proficiency, the ACT numbers were up from 20.4 percent to 24.3 percent.

WorkKeys proficiency was also included which covered the number of current graduates who are CTE completers that scored a silver, gold or platinum. Those numbers were way up from 22-23 rising from 58.3 percent to 68.8 percent in 23-24.

Graduation rate for four year cohorts (CGR-4yr) was down some from 78.4 percent to 77.5 percent while CGR-5yr also fell, but barely, from 80.9 percent to 80.6 percent.

English Leaner Progress were based a few factors — Met Progress which was up by a lot from 85 to 118; Exited which was down three 26 to 23; Total Met or Exited was 111 to 141, bringing the Total ELs from 366 in 22-23 to 417 in 23-24. The overall percentage that met progress going up 3.5 percent from 30.3 percent to 33.8 percent.

Kimbro also included how their numbers look compared to the state in the same categories last school term. In reading state averages are, 3rd 48.6 percent (-8.6 difference), 4th 52.6 percent (-8 percent), 5th 50.2 percent (-9.8 percent), 6th 49.4 percent (10.9 percent), 7th 48.3 percent (-13.6 percent), 8th 51.3 percent (-3 percent) and English 2 59.5 percent (-15.2 percent).

For math, state averages were: for 3rd 62.4 percent (2.7 percent difference), 4th 56.4 percent (-5.1 percent), 5th 57.8 percent (11.1 percent), 6th 54.1 percent (-15.9 percent) 7th 50.4 percent (-7.2 percent), 8th 46.7 percent (-2.8 percent), Math 1 37 percent (-10.3 percent) and Math 3 57.6 percent (-20.0 percent)

State science GLP averages were, 5th 66 percent (1.6 percent difference), 8th 70.0 percent (-2.2 percent) and BIO 53.4 percent (-11.6 percent). Included in that were CGR-4yr 86.9 percent (-9.4 percent), CGR-5yr 57.9 percent (22.7 percent), ACT 40.2 percent (-15.9 percent), WKEYS 60 percent (8.8 percent) and ELP 19.9 percent (8.4 percent)

Analytical Writing Section was another comparison Kimbro highlighted which was covered in the CCS data she presented. The average was up, though slightly, based on the state which was 54.3 percent in CCS and 53.9 percent for the state, a 0.4 percent difference.

Kimbro’s data also showed that all schools in the city system were state designated as TSI (Targeted Support and Improvement) in categories for:

LCK TSI — Consistently Underperforming Subgroups Students with Disabilities, BAS TSI — Consistently Underperforming Subgroups SWD, SAS TSI — Consistently Underperforming Subgroups SWD, SMS TSI — Consistently Underperforming Subgroups SWD and Additional Targeted Support SWD-2, CHS TSI — Consistently Underperforming Subgroups Early Learning Support (ELS) and Additional Targeted Support (ELS-2).