The percentage of students passing math in North Carolina and in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools continued to inch up last year as schools recovered after the coronavirus pandemic disrupted instruction, according to data released Wednesday. But math scores are still well below prepandemic levels, and reading scores have been harder to move.
Pass rates remain at 50% statewide for elementary and middle school reading. In CMS, 47% of those students earned grade-level scores in the 2023-24 school year. That’s about 7 percentage points below reading pass rates for the state and the district in the 2018-2019 school year.
Statewide scores show:
- In elementary and middle school math, 54.6% of students earned grade-level scores, up 1.6 percentage points over 2023. But that’s still down from 2019, when 58.6% passed the tests.
- In elementary and middle school reading, 50.1% earned grade-level scores, down 0.1 percentage points from 2023. In 2019, the pass rate was 57% for grades 3-8.
- Third-grade reading, considered a crucial benchmark for success, saw a slight increase. The 2024 pass rate was 48.6%, up 0.8% from 2023. In 2019, the pass rate was 56.8% for third grade. Last year’s third-graders spent at least part of kindergarten learning remotely.
- Eighth-grade science saw a notable drop last year to a 70% pass rate. This year it remained about the same.
- In high school, pass rates for English and math were up from 2023. In English II, 59.5% of students had passing scores, just 0.2% shy of 2019. In Math I, 37% of students had passing scores, 4 percentage points below 2019. (The Math I levels are low because the scores don’t include middle school students who take the course.)
Math III saw a slight decrease from 2023 with 57.6% passing, but still well above the 2019 rate. - Biology saw drops with just over 53.4% passing, deepening the gap between 2019 pass rates.
CMS scores showed:
- In elementary and middle school math, 54.6% of students earned grade-level scores last year, up 1.5 percentage points over 2023. But, in 2019, 63.6% passed the tests.
- In elementary and middle school reading, 47.5% of students passed the test, down 0.2% from 2023.
There’s some reason for optimism. The early grades have seen some progress with reading. Early literacy assessments, known as DIBELS, show gains, with the largest in second grade. Last year, 66.8% of second-graders scored at or above the benchmark. In the past three years, the gap between white/Asian and Black/Hispanic students has markedly narrowed.
CMS Superintendent Crystal Hill credits that to changes to reading instruction that the state began rolling out three years ago. She says that investment will pay off soon in the higher grades.
"I think that you’re seeing — not just here in Charlotte — but across the state, that investment in early literacy is really paying off, especially for those districts that were early adopters and jumped in," she said.
Still, though third-grade pass rates were up to 47.2%, the pass rate was 54.4% in 2019.
High school English II was down slightly to 58.6%. In 2019, the pass rate was 61%.
Across the state, 29% of schools did not meet expected growth in test scores. Within CMS, it was nearly 17%.
State Superintendent Catherine Truitt told the state's school board on Wednesday there’s a lot to celebrate with changes to reading instruction, but there’s a lot of work ahead.
"That indicates to me anyway that something different needs to occur, because we can’t expect our teachers to keep doing the same thing over and over and expect different results," she said.
Gaps in success
There are marked gaps with success in school. High-poverty schools and districts serving lots of Black and Hispanic students have long tended to have lower pass rates. Disruptions to classroom instruction during the pandemic was felt most acutely in communities with language barriers, minimal access to the internet, and families where an adult couldn’t help fill gaps in instruction. Those achievement gaps remain large throughout North Carolina and in CMS. The state combines all tests in elementary, middle and high school into a composite proficiency rate and breaks them down by types of students.
