The Daily Southerner, Tarboro, NC

Local News

August 8, 2012

Schools join students in receiving report cards

Staff Writer MIRANDA BAINES

TARBORO — Starting next school year, students won’t be the only ones in North Carolina’s public schools receiving a report card. That’s because each school in the state will receive an overall school performance grade of A, B, C, D, or F.

The school performance grades were among the new legislative items that Edgecombe County Public Schools (ECPS) Supt. John Farrelly discussed with the board of education in a Monday night work session. The grading system is part of the Excellent Public Schools Act. Farrelly said he anticipates that the new grading system might be “a little hard for some school systems to take.”

“It’s going to be a challenge with the new curriculum and new assessments,” he said. The North Carolina Public Schools will follow the new Common Core (math and language arts) curriculum during the 2012-2013 school year.

“The Common Core is a significant raising of the bar for our students,” said Dr. Meghan Doyle, district transformation coach for the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. She said it requires the students to use higher-ordered thought processes. The school performance grades could pose a challenge for ECPS not only because of the new curriculum, but also because several elementary schools in the district were identified as low performing in the ABC’s of Public Education report card released last Thursday.

“We may have some struggles based upon where we are right now as a school system, particularly when there are three priority schools that are at the elementary level and their reading proficiency not being anywhere close to where it needs to be,” said Farrelly. He said the new schools report card will be released in October 2013, whereas the ABC’s of Public Education was always released in August, prior to the beginning of the school year. The schools’ grades under the new system will be based on performance during the 2012-2013 school year.

“The bottom line is, we just need to have our students performing to grade level,” said board member Evelyn Wilson. “As we get our students performing to grade level, then we have no fear. The trouble is, we don’t have them performing to grade level [at this point.]”

For high schools, performance grades will be determined by the following criteria: percent of students who demonstrate college readiness on the ACT, percent of students who graduate within four years of entering high school, percent of students who take and pass a higher-level mathematics course, percent of students who demonstrate workplace readiness on WorkKeys, and percent of students scoring proficient on the English II, algebra I/ integrated mathematics I, and biology end-of-course assessments. Elementary and middle school performance grades will be determined by the percent of students scoring proficient on English/ language arts, mathematics and science end-of-grade assessments.





 

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