CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The national report card for schools was released Monday and the news isn’t good for districts nationwide.
As expected, schools mostly saw a decline in test scores for both reading and math. Math grades saw the lowest decline since 1990 and reading scores are at 1992 levels.
North Carolina and South Carolina both have work to do, but overall South Carolina came out on top compared to North Carolina.
Across the country, math scores saw their largest decreases ever.
"On math, I hope you all are as alarmed as I am," Beverly Perdue, National Assessment Governing Board Chair said. "By the results. It's systemic, it's across the country."
Perdue, also a former governor of North Carolina, said during a briefing of the results that everyone needs to be concerned especially the business community.
South Carolina was only one of 10 states who didn’t see any significant changes in math scores. On the other end, North Carolina joined 42 other states with declining math scores.
"There is no understating the urgency that must be felt by every policymaker, every political leader, every mom and dad, every teacher, and just go down the list," Peggy Carr, National Center for Education Statistics Commissioner, said. "This is big stuff for America."
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, one of the largest school districts in the country, participates in urban district assessment scoring. It compares the district to 26 other large urban school districts.
CMS, along with 22 out of 26 other large urban school districts, saw declining math scores. When compared with the other large districts, CMS fourth-graders scored higher than 19 other districts. On reading scores for fourth graders, the district outperformed 13 others.
Nationwide, reading was a bright spot for urban districts.
"Cities did not decline," Carr said. "They held steady. And this is interesting because there has been an improvement for the cities for a long time because the cities have been closing the gap between themselves and the nation for several decades."
South Carolina was only one of 22 states who didn’t see any significant changes in reading scores in fourth graders. North Carolina comparatively saw a decline alongside 29 other states.
North Carolina's declines mirrored the nation.
“These findings reflect what our Office of Learning Recovery identified in March of this year regarding the effects of lost instructional time and reaffirms our commitment to working towards recovery and acceleration statewide,” State Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt said in a release by the North Carolina Department of Instruction.
Education officials say the quality of virtual learning was unequal across the nation. Overall students who participated in real-time video lessons and had a teacher readily available to help with work once or twice a week did better.
“While our state maintained its performance overall as the nation showed significant decline, these results confirm there is still much work to do," South Carolina Superintendent of Education Molly Spearman said in a released statement. "We commend the work of educators to help students recover and reaffirm commitments to double down on efforts that will address the needs of all students and prepare them for college, career, and citizenship.”
Bright spots for CMS
The national report card results weren’t a victory lap for any school district, but there were bright spots in the data released this week for CMS.
"It's unfortunate that the nation had to go through the pandemic and shut down schools," Hugh Hattabaugh, CMS Interim Superintendent said.
CMS is one of a few large districts that fared better compared to other large school districts.
"We still out outpaced large cities and the state of North Carolina average and are on par with the national public schools," Franks Barnes, CMS Chief Accountability Officer said.
One example, if you look at reading scores CMS ranks fifth for 4th-grade reading for large districts. The same is true for 4th-grade math.
Although from year to year there were still major losses.
“We went from where we were at 41%, at or above proficiency down to 35%, which represented the largest decline from administration to administration," Barnes said.
Despite faring better than other large districts CMS officials still are battling record-low student outcomes for all students, especially Black and Hispanic.
"What it means is that we need to stay the course with our goals and guardrails and we need to double our commitment," CMS Board Chair Elyse Dashew said.
Contact Shamarria Morrison at smorrison@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.