North Carolina Department of Public Instruction officials are expecting a significantly lower educational ranking based on the state’s End of Grade test results Thursday.
Lynda Fuller, an information and communication specialist for the NCDPI, said that the state of North Carolina made changes to schools’ curricula last year to make End of Course and EOG assessments more challenging. Fuller said NCDPI officials expect new standardized test scores to be about 20 percent lower than in previous years.
The results from last year’s EOCs and EOGs will be released Thursday.
Fuller said that while EOC and EOG assessments are usually not used for comparison because these tests are administered by state governments, but she hopes North Carolina’s scores will be more comparable to other states.
“Because they are more aggressive, those numbers are expected to parallel more than in the past because there has been some debate that North Carolina’s tests really aren’t that aggressive or challenging,” Fuller said.
Lower scores may not sound like a good thing, but the hope is to ensure that these assessments are not showing false proficiency standards, according to Fuller.
These results will come less than a month after the National Center for Educational Statistics released a report that ranked North Carolina sixth in mathematics and 30th in science in the United States.
“This is a big week for North Carolina public schools,” Fuller said.
The NCES study used 2011 scores in math and science from two sources: the National Assessment of Educational Process, which was administered to eighth graders in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Department of Defense schools; and from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, which evaluated eighth graders in 38 different countries and 9 “subnational entities,” such as Quebec or Dubai.
Usually, it’s hard to compare how state public school systems are doing in comparison to one another because states have different curriculums and tests. The NAEP is often referred to as the nation’s report card because it is the only test administered nationwide, The Atlantic reported.
Despite the NCES report, Fuller said that North Carolina really isn’t standing out as much one would like to think. According to NAEP scores during longer periods of time, North Carolina is usually at or only slightly above the national average, Fuller said.
“We’re not top notch exemplary, but we’re not bottom of the pile,” Fuller said.
Though it may seem that North Carolina’s education system isn’t up to par, it is actually quite within the national range. This standing, however, may change when the new tests results are released and the NCDPI hopes to use these results for comparison, Fuller said.