The Orange County Schools Board of Education meeting on Sept. 9 featured a review of the proficiency and growth scores for local schools on the North Carolina State Board of Education’s annual report, which was released a few days earlier.
Of the 13 schools in the Orange County School District, three scored an overall SPG of B, seven earned a C and three scored a D last school year. This was two more C’s and two fewer D’s than the year before.
The Accountability Model of the Every Student Succeeds Act calculates School Performance Grades (SPG) with a combination of achievement in reading, math and science scores together forming 80% of the equation, plus the growth of those scores compared to the previous year forming the other 20%.
“Achievement” is a measure of performance in which students are considered “proficient” if they score at level 3 or above. “Growth” measures the progress students make over the course of a school year.
Four of the schools exceeded their expected growth according to the Education Value-Added Assessment System, eight met their expected growth and one did not meet it. The 92.3% meeting or exceeding expected growth was the best among school districts in this area, including the Alamance-Burlington, Chapel Hill-Carrboro, Chatham, Durham, Johnston, Person and Wake districts.
Overall grade-level proficiency scores in math and English were the highest they’ve been since the COVID-19 pandemic decimated scores across the board for the 2020-21 school year. While each of those subjects, as well as overall proficiency, has seen a steady recovery since that year, all but one (Math III) are still lower than they were in 2018-19, the last year unaffected by the pandemic. Among elementary and middle schools, reading and math proficiency rose in every grade level except 5th grade, which saw decreases in both subjects.
Asian and white students were the only two racial subgroups whose Grade Level Proficiency (GLP) was higher than the overall 54.9%, with 71.8% and 70.8% proficiency, respectively. The Hispanic (37.8%) and Black (36.7%) subgroups scored the lowest among the racial categories.
Cohort graduation rates fell for every subgroup except the Asian (no change), American Indian (no change), Black (increase of 0.1 percentage points) and disabled (increase of 1.6 percentage points) students. The overall graduation rate of 79.7% was 8.1 percentage points lower than it was in the previous year, with Hispanic (decrease of 13.4 percentage points), multiracial (decrease of 11.2 percentage points) and economically disadvantaged (decrease of 9 percentage points) students seeing the biggest falls.
Orange County Schools’ Strategic Plan for 2021-2026 includes four main goals for building equity: “teaching tomorrow’s leaders,” “excellence and efficiency,” an “exemplary staff” and “empowering culture.”
Click here to access meeting materials for the Board of Education’s Oct. 9 meeting, which has the full report of proficiency and growth across Orange County Schools.
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Hi there Lynn — thanks for letting us know. We’ll try to update the link to get visitors to the general agenda that will have the materials within it.