CHCCS Students Continue to Score Highly on SAT

Newly released SAT scores for high school students across the state show that Chapel Hill – Carrboro City School students scored very highly on the college-readiness exam.

High school students in the CHCCS district scored 18 points higher this year on the Critical Reading and Math composite SAT score, at an average of 1201 – the highest value to date, according to Assistant Superintendent Magda Parvey.

“Of course, we were very proud,” she says, “but we also really paid attention to the fact that Critical Reading and the Math composite are the areas in which we did a lot better.

“We have been really focusing a lot of our professional learning activities for staff and for principals in that area. So we really feel like there’s a correlation between the increased scores in that area and the work we’ve been doing in our district with our staff and our leaders.”

Parvey says curriculum has been adjusted and focused in recent years after the adoption of Common Core in the Tar Heel state.

“We did start our work in that area so that teachers were prepared to teach the new standards,” she says. “And the new standards are a lot more rigorous than the old standards.

“We partnered with the Institute for Learning, out of Pittsburgh, and they have really helped us in terms of what curriculum looks like aligned to the standards.”

Parvey says Common Core holds students to a higher standard than previous curriculum.

“[Common Core] requires a lot of writing, a lot of problem solving, a lot of thinking,” she says, “and writing really improves your ability to demonstrate your understanding of what you’re reading.

“And in mathematics, similarly, we’ve had a lot of work that we’ve done with the IFL; we’ve done a lot of professional learning around math and, again, around critical thinking and problem solving.”

Parvey says it is important to the district that all students are prepared for the SAT as well as the next step in their lives, whatever that may be, when they graduate from high school. She adds the district has adopted policies to ensure all students, not just those with the resources, have access to material to better prepare themselves.

“We do also offer scholarships, or no fee, for students to be able to have practice through Princeton Review,” she says. “We’ve had a partnership with them and we’ve worked with Princeton Review and our AVID students – that’s one of the programs we have for our students who really just need some organization and that are college bound.

“They get, at a reduced cost or no cost, Princeton Review prep classes.”

Parvey says that level of assistance for all students extends beyond preparedness for standardized tests.

“We have changed what we do with all kids,” she says, “not just in honors classes, not just in AP classes. But we have changed our approach to instruction in all of our classrooms so that there is academic rigor that all students are being exposed to; so that they seek to take the SAT; they seek to be in honors classes.

“We’re really proud of that.”

The total number of seniors taking the SAT in 2015 increases slightly, but the percentage of seniors taking the exam in North Carolina fell from 2014.