February 5, 2009 Issue
North Carolina School Report Cards Released
The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction has released the North Carolina School Report Cards for all schools and school districts in the state. School report cards provide information about school districts and individual schools, including data for school enrollment, average class sizes, end-of-grade and end-of-course test results, teacher qualifications, school safety statistics and instructional resources.
A snapshot summary of school report card results has been sent home with students in the Watauga County Schools, and the complete results for all schools are available online at www.ncreportcards.org.
According to Watauga County Schools spokesperson Marshall Ashcraft, “In terms of test results, the reports do not contain any new information—the figures have been released earlier at different times—but they compile a range of information for each school in one place and provide a means to share that with parents.”
The report cards show that schools in the Watauga County system compare well with other schools in North Carolina. Each of the elementary schools in the Watauga County Schools scored above the state average in the percentage of students rated proficient in reading and math on end-of-grade tests.
For the school system as a whole, 75.9 percent of students in grades 3 to 8 scored at or above grade level proficiency on the end-of-grade tests in reading, compared to 57.2 percent statewide. In math, 84.6 percent of students in grades 3 to 8 scored at or above grade level proficiency compared to 71.4 percent statewide.
At the high school level, end-of-course tests in ten academic subjects are North Carolina’s principal measure of student performance. At Watauga High School, 77.9 percent of end-of-course test results were proficient or above compared to 68.4 percent statewide.
Watauga High School students also compare favorably to their statewide peers in regard to SAT scores, another measure included in the report cards. The average Watauga High School SAT score of 1,102 (critical reading and mathematics combined) ranked second among the state’s 115 public school systems and was significantly above the state average of 1,007 and the national average of 1,017. The high school’s graduation rate of 68.5 percent was slightly below the statewide rate of 70.3 percent.
School report cards do not include the results for 5th and 8th grade science tests or the 4th, 7th and 10th grade writing tests. A comparison of statewide and Watauga County Schools performance on these and other measures is available through the link for Compare Watauga County Schools and NC Schools on the Watauga County Schools website at www.watauga.k12.nc.us.
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