North Carolina's School Performance Grades are out. 65.4 percent of the state's public elementary and middle schools and more than 88.8 percent of high schools earned a grade of C or better.
It's the first time that the state is giving a letter grade to the schools. For elementary and middle schools, 80 percent of the grade relies on end-of-year test scores, and 20 percent will measure student's academic growth from the year before.
High school grades include other factors like ACT scores and graduation rates. Tammy Howard with the State Department of Public Instruction says grades are just one indicator on how a school is performing.
“It's always important when we are looking at data to remember what are the measures being used to generate that information, in this case a school performance grade. There's much more that goes on in schools and one of things that we are continuing to stress is that our schools are doing very well with respect to growth,” says Howard.
But the performance grading system draws attention to areas where poverty rates are high and grades are failing.
"If we look at schools with those two designations of 50 percent or more poverty, or less than 50 percent poverty, we can see very clearly that the A schools are the one with less than 50 percent poverty earning those A's," says Howard. "And when we look at F schools, there are no schools with less than 50 percent poverty that are earning an F, so that is very telling."
The state says the information is designed to serve as a tool for parents and the community and hold school districts accountable.
In Guilford County, school officials say the new grading system is flawed, because it relies primarily on end-of-year test scores and not enough on other factors like meeting or exceeding a student's academic growth goals from the previous year.
“While we certainly favor having another resource and understand the desire to have some sort of simple method to communicate with parents, I'm not sure that this accomplishes that goal and creates harm by putting in inappropriate labels," says Nora Carr, chief of staff with Guilford County Schools. "It is somewhat akin to the "Scarlett Letter" only it is the scarlet F or D in this case, and the fact that these aren't reflective to the quality of work that is going on in our schools just adds to that frustration.”
Carr also is concerned that the letter grades unfairly label schools in low-income neighborhoods that are dealing with several challenges but showing improvement.
Click here to find out how your school performed.
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