Grins And Groans For CMS Exam Scores
Despite seeing its massive billion-dollar-plus budget contract over the last two years to a slightly less massive billion-dollar-plus budget, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools posted gains in preliminary results released this week for end-of-grade and end-of-course exams for 2010, while also managing to improve the district’s dropout rate with 70 percent of students nabbing a diploma in the standard four years, up from the previous mark of only 66 percent.
Pass rates on high school end-of-course exams hit 79 percent for the 2009-10 school year, compared to the previous year’s 76 percent. End-of-grade exams for elementary and middle schools also saw improvement: reading pass rates bumped to 62 percent, up from the previous year’s 59 percent; math composite scores showed 75 percent of students passing, compared to 72 percent the previous year.
The pass rates become even more impressive, as well as more controversial, with a new scoring twist that debuted during the 2008-09 school year. That’s when the state started requiring all elementary and middle school students who barely missed passing their end-of-grade exams to take a different version of the exam, which still covered the same material, sometimes just a few days after coming up shy on the first attempt. High school students started getting a second bite at the apple during the recently completed school year.
Most students took advantage: With retests factored into the equation, high school pass rates jumped from 79 percent to 85 percent.
With retests tossed into the grading pool, 70 percent of elementary and middle school students passed reading exams, compared to 62 percent without the retests. In math, 82 percent passed with retests, compared to 75 percent without.
A total of 59,904 end-of-course exams were given to high school students and 10,190 of them took the exams twice. A total of 62,643 students in grades 3 through 8 were given end-of-grade exams. Each student underwent three test session – two for math and one for reading. A total of 124,977 tests were given and 36,860 retests were given.
The retesting model has its critics, including Superintendent Peter Gorman, who say the results create a distorted reality and make for disingenuous comparisons.
“Overall, we are pleased but not satisfied,” Gorman said of the scores CMS posted. “We want to see the pace of improvement accelerate even more.”
Regardless of how many swipes at exams students got, and despite largely positive gains across the board, CMS continued to struggle with the so-called achievement gap, with significant disparities still lingering between how low-income, black and Hispanic students fared compared to their white and more affluent counterparts.
In elementary and middle schools, only 64 percent of students who received free or reduced-price lunches (FRL) passed math exams on their first attempt, compared to 88 percent of non-FRL students. That gap was 2 percent higher than the previous year. With retests, 73 percent of FRL students passed, compared to 92 percent of non-FRL students, a gap that increased 1 percent from the previous year.
Forty-six percent of FRL students passed end-of-grade reading exams on their first try, compared to 81 percent of non-FRL students, which translates into a 5 percent widening of the achievement gap from the previous year. With retests, 56 percent of FRL students passed reading exams, compared to 87 of non-FRL students, a gap that increased 4 percent from the previous year.
Similar disparities existed based on race, but gaps closed marginally compared to the previous year. For first-attempt math exams, 62 percent of black students passed; 70 percent of Hispanic students; 86 percent of Asian students and 92 percent of white students. With retests, those pass rates increased to 71 percent for black students; 79 percent for Hispanic students; 90 percent for Asian students and 95 percent for white students.
Passing rates for reading exams were 47 percent for black students; 48 percent for Hispanic students; 70 percent for Asian students and 85 percent white students. Given a second chance, pass rates increased to 57 percent for black students; 58 percent for Hispanic students; 76 percent for Asian students and 90 percent for white students.
On high school end-of-course exams, where overall composite pass rates stood at 79 percent (bumped to 85 percent with retests), 70 percent of FRL students passed, increasing to 77 percent with retests, while 87 percent of non-FRL students passed, increasing to 91 percent with retests.
End-of-course pass rates based on race broke down as follows: black students – 70 percent (77 percent with retests); Hispanic students – 74 percent (80 percent with retests); Asian students – 87 percent (90 percent with retests) and white students – 92 percent (95 percent with retests).
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