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State report reveals decline in graduation rates for Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools

By Elsa Gillis
By Elsa Gillis

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Graduation rates are slipping across all Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools. Some individual schools have seen a big spike in students failing to get their diploma.

The state released its grades for every district Tuesday morning.

[CMS Project LIFT thrilled with gains in test scores, graduation rate]

The districtwide graduation rate dropped from 89.4 percent to 85.1 percent.

Channel 9 spoke with CMS Superintendent Dr. Clayton Wilcox after the results were released. He referred to the report as "sobering."

"This is a sobering score report for us. It is not something that any of us take lightly. We want 100% of our young people to graduate from this school system," Wilcox said.

The report showed a steep decline for some area schools.

Harding University High School dropped from 77 percent to 57.6 percent.

West Mecklenburg High School went from 87.7 percent to 66.3 percent.

New state calculation rules played a role in these drops.

The older calculation rules used to be if a student came into high school not prepared to graduate, such as if they were behind on credits, they were not counted in the school graduation rate.

That changed in 2018's report.

Wilcox said the school is going to work hard to get graduation rates back up.

[New state report card shows crime is up in CMS schools]

"We're gonna do our very best to get 89 percent again next year, and then what we are going to do is work very hard after that to get to 95 percent," Wilcox said.

Wilcox said it is important for the community to remember CMS is more than the results seen on the report.

"We are more than a set of scores. Our kids are more than a set of schools, and our teachers deserve to be judged on more than a set of scores," Wilcox said.

[CMS pulls capital funding for 4 towns that could build charter schools]

CMS officials said if the same calculation rules that were used in 2017 had been applied in 2018, the overall decline would have been less.

They estimated it would have been about an 88 percent graduation rate.

Annual North Carolina schools report shows limited progress

Fewer of North Carolina's 1.5 million public school students are attending problem schools, but the annual snapshot released Wednesday showing how the state's classrooms are doing shows few significant changes in recent years.

There are nearly three dozen fewer schools in the more than 400 statewide that year after year show poor performance in teaching children, the annual school accountability report showed. Six consistently low-performing elementary or middle schools are being considered for a state takeover next year.

But many other measures from the 2017-18 school year were status quo.

Once again, fewer than half the elementary and middle school students tested last spring were ready to tackle both reading and math in the next grade. The percentage of 11th-graders taking a college admission exam deemed ready to attend a public university has fallen in each of the past two years. Graduation rates were frozen. The same share of the state's more than 2,500 traditional and charter schools earned As or Bs under the state's A-to-F grading system.

"When we dig into the data, we see that some results go up, some results go down, but consistently the trend is that we are not where we want to be for students," state schools Superintendent Mark Johnson said. "We really seem to be plateauing."

Public schools are serving an increasing number of children from poor families who may get less learning help at home, and that's an important reason why performance measures have stalled, state school board chairman William Cobey said in an interview.

He and Johnson pointed separately to plans to expand personalized learning - where students learn at their own pace using computer packages and other methods.

"I think that is where we're going to see improvement," said Cobey, who is stepping down Thursday after five years of leading the state school board.

Johnson said teachers and principals are working harder than ever, but their efforts are deadened by "the system that they're confined in."

"We have been trying the same thing in our public education system for a number of years. Our system was designed 100 years ago to fit for a society in the industrial age," Johnson said. For example, middle schools and high schools should decrease the message that college is necessary for a successful work life when computer and other technical skills are in high demand.

Teachers will spend less time preparing for standardized tests and more time on instruction, Johnson said.

He also pointed to an experiment that school district in Rowan County and Salisbury is trying this year. Under a new state law, the 19,000-student school district will have increased flexibility to skip state guidelines and shake up scheduling, staffing, curriculum and handling its finances.

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