Robbinsville – The Graham County Board of Education learned about the district’s growth at Tuesday’s meeting.
Graham County Schools Accountability Director Kevin White presented the growth and proficiency test rates of Graham County Schools midway through the assembly. Most telling is that none of the system’s three facilities – Robbinsville Elementary School (“C”), Robbinsville Middle School (“D”) and Robbinsville High School (“C”) held firm to the grades received during last year’s report from the state level.
White explained that will take a couple of years of students improving on growth to change the school letter grade. He personally thinks growth is more important that the proficiency or school letter grade.
White presented a detailed breakdown with English, math, science and biology scores for grades 3-9. The previous years were used to compare with the 2022-23 scores.
White went on to explain the chart and reasoning for why some grade levels met or did not meet the growth level for a particular subject. For example, recent 5th-grade math passing score levels were 24.1 percent (2020-21); 19 percent (2021-22); and 29.5 percent (2022-23). Fifth-grade math did not meet growth for the 2022-23 school year.
Even though the percent is larger than the year before, the scores are not comparing just the grade level: the scores are based on the group of kids that are in class together. This group of kids had a 30.1 percent passing level in math 4th grade last year – yet did not meet the growth level because the percent decreased to 29.5 percent in 2022-23.
It is important to note that both the 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years were impacted significantly by the COVID pandemic; students spent much of their time remote-learning, which has caused dips in grades nationwide.