Just as students anxiously await their final grades each summer, the next fall public schools across North Carolina receive their own report card. That report includes an A through F letter grade for the school.
As a parent, you may first hear about your neighborhood school's letter grade from a realtor or on Zillow when you buy or rent your home, or from researching your local schools when considering where to send your kindergartener next fall.
But there's so much more to an NC school report card than that letter grade to give context about the school — and those insights might even make you feel differently about the letter grade!
State Superintendent Mo Green and his predecessor Catherine Truitt have both advocated to change school letter grades to better reflect school quality — because those grades are based first and foremost on how students do on a few exams one week out of the year. There's so much more you can learn from really digging into a school's report card.
Breaking down a school report card
If you go to the NC School Report Card interactive website, first you'll be met with a map. Choose your county to see report cards for all the public schools in the county: charter schools and those in the local school district.
Next, let's walk through some of the most telling sections of the school report cards.
Academic "growth" on state exams vs. the letter grade
Below is an example of what you would see next if you chose Edgecombe County. Right away, you see a range of letter grades and colors. Each colored tile represents a school.
First, let's pay attention to these colors. Gray means a school has "not met growth" on state standardized tests. Green means a school has "met growth" and gold means a school has "exceeded growth."
- What is growth? It's a metric calculated by statisticians at SAS, the Cary-based data and analytics company. It determines whether students at the school, on the whole, did better or worse on their annual end-of-grade and end-of-course exams than would be expected based on those students' past performance. The formula SAS uses is not publicly known.
- Why does it matter? Consider Coker-Wimberly Elementary and EDGE Academy of Health Sciences. Both received a "D" letter grade, but one "met growth" and the other "exceeded growth." That letter grade is based primarily on state test scores. The school letter grade doesn't include any soft metrics regarding school safety, or teacher qualifications, or classes offered. More on letter grades later.
The key point is, these two schools both had low passing rates on state tests, but teachers there are helping students improve. At EDGE Academy, students are improving at a faster rate than expected. So now you might be more impressed with that school, even compared to another school that has a higher letter grade but did "not meet growth."
Now that you understand a little bit about letter grades and growth, click on a tile to get that school's report card.
Academic Performance and School Letter Grade
School report cards and letter grades prioritize how well students do on state standardized tests they take each spring. The performance grade reflects the share of students who were considered "proficient" on state exams. The report card will also show you the performance and growth scores over time, so you have a sense of whether or not the school's been improving in recent years.
The school's A-F letter grade is based on the performance grade, which is calculated with just a few metrics:
- 80% of the grade is based on the percentage of students who were considered proficient on state exams (the performance grade score) and the growth of students who are English language learners
- 20% of the grade is based on academic growth
- For high schools, the graduation rate, the rigor of math courses and students' credentials in career and technical education are also considered.
A body of research shows performance on standardized tests is strongly associated with students' family income and socioeconomic status. So it's worth noting how many students at the school are economically disadvantaged compared to the state and county as you consider the school's performance grade and letter grade.
Teacher Qualifications
The teacher qualification section will tell you the percentage of teachers at the school who:
- are beginning teachers or experienced teachers
- have achieved national board certification, a national certificate that requires extensive work to document their skills in the classroom
- are rated "highly effective" "effective" or "needs improvement" based solely on their students' performance and growth on state tests
- have a standard teaching license, which shows they have completed necessary college coursework and licensing exams to teach in North Carolina long-term, or
- have an emergency license, which could mean they do not yet have a college degree in education or possibly even their subject area, or have not yet met licensing requirements including passing licensing exams
None of these metrics about teachers are considered in the school letter grade. They will give you a picture of how experienced, qualified and competent the teachers at the school are, which also might give you insight into how well the school is recruiting and retaining good teachers. This is a window into whether teachers want to teach at this school.
School Environment
The school environment section of the report card is chock full of details you may really care about as a parent, but that don't factor into the school letter grade. They include:
- average class sizes
- school safety and discipline metrics like suspensions, expulsions, bullying, and arrests
- chronic absenteeism among students
- library books per student
- devices (laptops or pads) available or issued per student and wireless access and
- music, dance, theater, and visual arts classes available to students
Report cards for high schools will also show you student enrollment in advanced courses and career-related classes in other sections of the report card.
Funding
The final section of the report card shows the school's funding compared to the county and state. This can give you a sense of funding, but don't sweat the comparisons too much, because schools serving more students experiencing poverty receive more state and federal funds. That generally does not translate to nicer buildings and facilities (which are funded with local taxes), but it does make funding for educators and operations a little more equitable to meet the greater needs of the students.
Local funding for schools certainly varies across North Carolina, but you might not get the clearest picture from the data in this section of how well-funded a school is going to feel when you walk inside. For that, you need to visit the school, which is always a great idea if you're choosing a school for your child.
History of school report cards
North Carolina school report cards have been around for more than 20 years in some form, but they didn't always include letter grades. School reporting was first implemented to comply with the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2021 that was aimed at improving accountability for schools nationwide. Under state law, in 2014 school report cards in North Carolina began including an A-F letter grade based on students' performance on state tests. Those letter grades have stirred controversy and anxiety for low-performing schools since they were first introduced.
Efforts to redesign school letter grades
One thing current Democratic State Superintendent Maurice "Mo" Green and former Republican State Superintendent Catherine Truitt have in common is that they have both said publicly that school report cards need an update to better reflect how well schools are serving students.
They want to give more weight to "growth" on state tests and less weight to overall performance on those tests. They have also suggested considering other metrics in the final letter grade. However, these changes would require state lawmakers to revise state laws that set the requirements for school report cards.
