MECKLENBURG COUNTY, N.C. — The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools district is currently off track to increase the number of students earning an endorsement alongside their high school diploma.
Endorsements give students a competitive edge to apply for colleges in North Carolina. Students can also get an endorsement for language skills or a job in the workforce like construction.
There are five types of endorsements North Carolina students can graduate with.
CMS's Career Technical Education, or CTE, courses-related endorsements were hit hard.
"I think students, especially our seniors, were impacted by the lack of the ability to have hands-on activities that many of our career technical education programs have," CMS Interim Superintendent Hugh Hattabaugh said.
Only 37.7% of students graduating are on track to earn an endorsement this school year, but CMS is having trouble accurately tracking the number.
"It's a statewide Power School data quality concern, I don't believe this was a CMS," Margaret Marshall, a CMS Board member, said. "This was a CMS discovered -- we discovered it but it's a statewide issue."
In May, CMS saw inaccuracies in how language endorsements were tracked.
“The accountability team had been working diligently to get us a platform and a tool and a system and process in place so that we can monitor the endorsements accurately," Hattabaugh said.
In a report, CMS said," These errors are significant, and contributed to over reporting of at least 10.6 percentage points in 2020-21. Specifically, we reported 61.2% of graduates in 2021 earned an endorsement when the actual percentage was 50.6% based on the data stored in PowerSchool. These data errors put our calculations for 2021-22 into question."
Students, who started high school during a pandemic, and are now seniors have felt the weight of graduation.
"The pressure has been kind of tough on me dealing with varsity sports as long with college applications," Moises Guerrero, a CMS senior, said. "It's been, it's been pretty rough because I'm planning on doing early action for all my schools."
CMS says a solution to help with stress and endorsement interest is talking to students early.
"When it comes to the endorsements, and what their focus area happens to be as I go through, and what do they plan on doing once they walk across the stage? What are their interests?" Hattabaugh asked.
The district says it's waiting on the state to beta test a new way to track endorsements in January. They will then be able to accurately assess the data when it's rolled out statewide.
Contact Shamarria Morrison at smorrison@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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