(The Center Square) – North Carolina’s state school superintendent is touting newly released test scores from last spring as evidence that with hard work, educators can turn student performance around quickly.
“One of the things that was highlighted is that there was dramatic improvement with regards to the decrease in the number of low-performing schools,” first-term Democratic Superintendent Mo Green said in a news conference after the new data was presented to the state school board.
The number of schools designated low performing dropped by nearly 50 fewer and there were 60 fewer schools designated “continually low performing.”
He singled out Lakeside Charter Academy in Cornelius.
“This school went from a grade of F to a C,” Green said. “It went from not meeting growth to exceeding growth over the course of this past year. This means that the school is no longer low performing.”
North Carolina public school students did better on 12 of 15 math and reading standardized tests taken at the end of the school year last spring, according to new data presented Wednesday. The four-year graduation rate was the highest in a decade, increasing to 87.7%, from 87% in 2023-24.
The test results represent more than just statistics, the superintendent said.
“They represent thousands of students who are better prepared for their next phase in life,” Green said. “I’m so pleased to make this presentation even as we know that our goal is not to be where we are today. There’s much work that has to be done for us to get to a place where we are best in nation by 2030.”
He praised efforts by the North Carolina General Assembly to limit student access to mobile devices in the classroom, saying it will “allow for more instruction and more teaching and learning to transpire.”
The state is also researching artificial intelligence to see how it might help improve education, Green said.
More funding for education could help the effort to improve schools, Green said.
“When you think about North Carolina and where we find ourselves compared to the rest of the nation with regards to resources, there are reports that come out that place us in the 48th position across the states in the country and thousands of dollars less than the national average and even compared to Virginia and South Carolina on a per-pupil basis,” Green said. “We need more resources which would allow us recruit, retail and grow our educators who can then in turn do amazing things.”
