(The Center Square) – Impacts from statewide public school closures during the COVID-19 era are still being felt, North Carolina’s new Democratic superintendent at the Department of Public Instruction says.
“These students had their learning disrupted during a critical time in their early education,” Mo Green said in a release Wednesday morning following publication of the Nation’s Report Card by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. “The widening achievement gap between our highest performing students and those with greater needs adds another layer of urgency to the work my team and I will be doing over the next four years to inspire excellence in our public schools.”
The system closures for weeks at a time and subsequent remote learning drew heavy criticism against Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Mandy Cohen. Cooper’s second four-year term ended Dec. 31, and Cohen left her post Dec. 31, 2021, to answer a call from then-President Joe Biden to lead the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Green took over Jan. 1, having defeated former Republican Superintendent Catherine Truitt in the November election.
The analysis is done every two years, measuring reading and math for fourth graders and eighth graders. Truitt led the state to implement science of reading between 2021 and last June, and Green says the tests from the first quarter of 2024 do not reflect the progress made in literacy education. More than 44,000 teachers over those three years completed early childhood Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling, or LETRS.
The Department of Public Instruction says 6.5 million hours of instruction were consumed by educators in the training.
Green said results from DIBELS 8, the acronym for Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, shows students scored better than the national level in first through third grades.
On the Nation’s Report Card, North Carolina’s eighth grade math scores include 62% at or above basic. That’s better than 59% national. The changes for at or above proficient in math for both fourth and eighth graders were considered statistically higher, with all other results considered within the realm of statistically the same.
In math, fourth graders were 41% at or above proficient, up from 35% two years ago, and 77% were at or above basic, up from 75%. Eighth graders were 31% at or above proficient, up from 25% two years ago, and 62% at or above basic, up from 61%.
In reading, fourth graders were 30% at or above proficient, down from 32% two years ago, and 58% at or above basic, down from 61%. Eighth graders were 27% at or above proficient, up from 26% two years ago, and 65% at or above basic, down from 66%.
