It looks like the Wake County school system saw some overall academic gains this past school year under the state's ABCs of Public Education accountability program.
New results released at today's State Board of Education meeting show that 95 percent of Wake's schools met or exceeded growth expectations, up from 89 percent last year. Wake had 70.3 percent of schools, or 114, showing high growth and 24.7 percent of schools, or 40, showing expected growth.
Wake also had 17 Honor Schools of Excellence/Schools of Excellence, up from 14 last year. Wake also had 79 Schools of Distinction, up from 63 last year.
Overall, 60.4 percent of Wake's schools were either Schools of Distinction or Schools of Excellence/Honor Schools of Excellence. That's up from 49.7 percent last year.
Wake's graduation rate rose to 80.4 percent, up from 78.2 percent the prior year. But the gap between Wake and the rest of the state continued to shrink. The state's graduation rate is now at 77.7 percent, up from 74.2 percent last year.
These new results come a few weeks after preliminary AYP results showed that only 13.5 percent of Wake's schools met No Child Left Behind standards this year.
Both the ABCs and No Child Left Behind use state exams for their results. The disconnect comes from the state setting significantly higher AYP targets this year toward the goal of having 100 percent of students passing in 2014.
Click here to view the link for the ABCs and AYP info.
Comments
nice try
Fri, 08/05/2011 - 08:41 — EBDarcyMuch of the criticism has been focused on what will likely happen when the majority carries out it's plan and creates a new set of high-poverty racially -isolated schools. That disaster has yet to fully play out.
There is no proof that WCPSS
Fri, 08/05/2011 - 14:08 — VillageMentalityThere is no proof that WCPSS will fail if they become community based. There is much to be done, yes, but you or I don't yet know all the plans for schools with high concentrations of poverty.
To date there are a number of intervention being utilized to assist schools in need, including additional resources. We need to give folks the opportunity to work on the interventions and see if it makes a difference rather than bash as a failure before the research has been done here.
that's just revisionism
Fri, 08/05/2011 - 09:05 — Bob_SconceThe GSIW folks and their allies have been claiming that the sky is falling on just about every action by this board. When was the last time they said "you're doing things right, except for this assignment plan"?
Good news
Thu, 08/04/2011 - 21:56 — SatchHHfor Wake! wonder why none of the typcial WCPSS bashers have weighed in yet. Sad day for the public school haters when the news is out that WCPSS is actually continuing to improve. Kudos to students, teachers, staff and families!!!
Absolutely.
Thu, 08/04/2011 - 23:08 — Bob_SconceYou are absoultely correct -- where's the disaster that the GSIW folks and their allies have been claiming would happen with the current board majority?
Nevertheless, the distict still has a long way to go. The district has 168 schools, yet only 17 of them are Honors Schools of Excellence. When there are only 17 that aren't Honors Schools of Excellence, *that* will be something to be proud of. Recall that it's still possible for 1 in 5 students to fail, and for the school to be a "School of Distinction." (some distinction!)
Changes not in effect yet
Wed, 08/10/2011 - 08:28 — SatchHHBob, the changes to assignment have not been in effect long enough to make a difference - as you well know. Only one year of node switches has actually touched the schools. Next year we'll have more and the next, the full assignment plan will kick in. The WCPSS bashers I refer to are the WCPSS board majority and its supporters (I should have made this clear in my post) - who keep claiming that WCPSS needs a major overhaul in its assignments. The WCPSS bashers on this blog are quite silent when any good news about WCPSS comes out - because the good news shows that RIGHT things are and have been going on all along. Yes, YES, some things need to change, but the overarching philosophy of assignment, etc. doesn't.
Please define/clarify what
Wed, 08/10/2011 - 14:09 — DrActualFactualPlease define/clarify what you mean by overarching philosophy of assignment. TIA.
Bizarre...
Wed, 08/10/2011 - 10:55 — Bob_SconceSo, now a majority of the board members of the Wake County Public School System are 'bashers' of that same school system? What a bizarre turn of events. I've been seeing regular communiques from John Tedesco lauding things that are happening in the school system.
In any case, the current WCPSS bashers (which I would call the people like GSIW who oppose the current direction of the school system) predicted gloom-and-doom from practically every decision the board made. I agree that assignment changes haven't had much of an effect, but what about all the other changes -- why hasn't Tata driven the district into the ground yet like his detractors claimed he would? Why are test scores up, even though there was a huge budget hit last year? Why are people still moving to Wake County (well, as much as anybody moves in this economy) after Stephen Colbert and the Washington Post? Is it really just that they've only been in office for two years, and that's not enough time (even though they've certainly pushed through a lot of changes)? Or, could it possibly be that their detractors were wrong?
There's always a disaster it
Fri, 08/05/2011 - 14:02 — VillageMentalityThere's always a disaster it seems when change is made.... Doesn't make it evil or racist or republican which those to the left like to scare folks with......
The fact is we are going in the right direction, despite a few bumps and missteps by some of the newer board members. Mistakes are to be learned from.
We have learned much from the egregious mistakes made by the former board and their superintendent.
The numbers are very hopeful all around; the problem is a deceptive N&O who frames these headlines to imply the system is failing, when its the fed NCLB initiated by Bush and perpetuated by Obama that is failing. How can a school "fail" acording to NCLB standards when they perform as schools of Excellence and/or Distinction? Absolutely Crazy....
Congrats to all the hard working Wake Schools Staff working in the trenches!