North Carolina school report cards released
RALEIGH (WTVD) -- Public Schools of North Carolina released the annual report cards for every school in the state Tuesday.
"This is the 14th year North Carolina has provided a comprehensive resource for information on public school indicators," said State Superintendent June Atkinson in a news release with the grades. "The information contained in the NC School Report Cards will help parents and the public better understand how schools are preparing students for the future."
"Having that comparison between the school the district and the state helps you figure out, 'How am I doing?' said Diane Dulaney, who helped put the numbers together for the Department of Public Instruction. "Am I doing better than the state? Am I not quite keep up?"
This is the second year that schools have gotten a letter grade (A-F) as required by state law. But as Dulaney puts it, "one number is not always that illuminating."
"The school report card puts a lot of different kind of data all in a one-stop-shop," said Dulaney. "School safety, academic performance, teacher quality, school size. It's in one easy to use site and I hope that parents and community members will go in and take a look at the complete picture of a school and find a school that works for them."
There can be startling gaps in the scores. Wake County had considerably higher academic scores than either Durham or Cumberland counties, for instance, where Cumberland had more than double the number of students suspended than were sent home in Wake Schools.
"We can't solve a problem if we don't know it exists," said Dulaney. "So when we understand what the situation in a school is then we can begin to rally the community or meet with the leadership of the school to figure out how we can improve the school. Or we may find that there are terrific things going on and how can we support that and foster that and encourage that?"
Want to know how your school did? Here are the links:
