This story first appeared in WFAE Education Reporter James Farrell's weekly newsletter. Sign up here to get newsletters from WFAE straight to your inbox.
This is my favorite time of year: when education reporters finally get our hands on state accountability data.
That tells us how students performed on last year’s state exams. It gives us a temperature check on school performance and whether district strategies are working.
For Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, it was a second year of big — even historic — gains, which you can read about here.
Last week’s data comes after a tense spring and summer that put Superintendent Crystal Hill’s leadership in question, after the school board rejected her proposed budget and then hit Hill with a subsequent suspension and investigation. Amid those growing tensions, board members focused more on achievement gaps — the fact that Black and Hispanic students often lag behind their white and Asian peers.
I reported last month on why those gaps are so stubborn, even in years with broad academic gains. At this year’s data release briefing, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer Beth Thompson offered a blunter assessment of CMS’ progress on closing gaps than I’d heard before.
“We are not satisfied with where we stand right now in terms of achievement gaps,” Thompson said. “And I just want to say that with a period and not even — no disclaimers around it. We’re not satisfied with where we are.”
She added that there has been progress – nearly every student group saw proficiency rates rise. That hasn’t been the case in the past, where gains for one group often meant that others were declining or remaining stagnant, leading to wider gaps.
“Today, groups are moving up together,” Thompson said.
The next step is to close those gaps. That means making sure students who lag behind make even greater improvements than their peers to catch up.
That’s the overall takeaway: Achievement gaps remain wide. But with only a few exceptions, students from all racial groups improved. Whether that was enough to narrow some of those gaps depends on where you look.
Latino and Black students gain in proficiency
As my colleague Julian Berger reported last week, Latino students made some huge improvements last year despite the Border Patrol crackdown in November, which led to increased absences and anxiety in Latino communities. CMS officials have said it doesn’t appear to have harmed student test results. “We don't see a direct correlation,” Thompson told me at last week’s press conference.
Let’s look at Grade-Level Proficiency (GLP). Students achieve this designation when they score at least a three out of five on their state exam. When you look at the composite score the state derives by combining all exams, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander (+6 percentage points), Latino students (+6), students from two or more races (+6) and Black students (+5) improved the most.
They all either matched or outperformed the rate of improvement for all students (+5).
You can see here that the gaps still exist: White and Asian students still have higher proficiency rates overall. But the higher rate of improvement for groups like Black and Latino students means those gaps narrowed — at least a little.
Other bright spots appear in specific subject areas. On high school Math I exams (not including eighth graders who take the exam as advanced students), Latino students gained a massive 16 points in proficiency after four years of near-stagnation. That’s enough to narrow the gap with white students by 5 points and with Asian students by 10 — even as white and Asian students also improved.
(Note: I excluded American Indian/Alaska Native and native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander in this graphic because of sample size. State data shows less than 20 students tested in each group on high school Math I.) In English II, the percentage of Black students scoring at proficiency increased by 8 points — the highest increase of any racial group except students from two or more races (+10). That closed the gap with white students by 5 points and Asian students by 4.
Less progress in Career- and College-Ready data
In the GLP data for reading grades 3-8 and math grades 3-8, Black and Latino students saw slightly bigger gains compared to historically higher-performing groups like white and Asian students.
But it’s a little more uneven when you look at the percentages of students scoring Career- and College-Ready (CCR). This is the more advanced designation a student achieves if they score a 4 or 5 on their state exam.
When we look at that composite score across all exams, we can see that Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander (+9), students of two or more races (+5), Black students (+4) and Latino students (+4) again made the largest gains in CCR. But with exception of Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, who belong to a smaller sample size, those gains are slightly smaller than the gains in grade-level proficiency.
On high school Math I, Latino gains were strong (+8) but more modest than that 16-point jump in GLP. White students (+13) and Asian students (+11) both saw more significant gains. Students of two or more races also saw big gains (+14).
Increasing the percentage of students scoring CCR on Math I is a key goal for CMS. This year’s results show the most promising progress yet toward hitting those targets, with CCR rates nearly doubling from 9% to 17%. That breaks a streak of stagnation dating back to 2021-22. But it’s still below this year’s target of 24%. And at least in this goal, despite their gains, Latino and Black students fell behind their peers.
Gains in reading CCR were also more modest, with Black and Hispanic students also only seeing a one-point and two-point increase, respectively. That’s another one of the CMS board goals.
State officials said last week that this year’s data shows a statewide need to focus on moving more kids up from GLP into CCR status. At the state level, 59.2% of students are grade-level proficient across all exams. But only 37.5% are scoring the four or five needed to be career and college-ready.
“The data clearly identifies where the work must accelerate,” said DPI Chief Academic Officer Stacey Wilson-Norman. “Level three represents progress. However, our ambition must be to move more students toward level four and five.”
