Innovative schools make gains on ABCs
August 5, 2010 -
North Carolina’s innovative high schools showed strong progress in student achievement during 2009-10, according to performance indicators released Thursday by the State Board of Education and the Department of Public Instruction. The results from the state’s ABCs of Public Education accountability system included data for 106 schools that were supported by NCNSP during the 2009-10 year.
Overall, NCNSP schools made significant gains over the previous year:
- Nearly two thirds all NCNSP innovative high schools (64 percent) met the academic growth projected by the state, while one in three (33 percent) exceeded their expected growth targets and were deemed to have achieved high growth. In 2007-08, 54.5 percent of NCNSP schools met their targets, with 20.2 percent exceeding them.
- The median performance composite, which includes the results of all state End-of-Course exams, was 87.3 percent for NCNSP schools in 2009-10, up from 76.2 percent in 2008-09 and 72.1 percent in 2007-08. The median for traditional 9-12 schools was 80.3 percent, up from 71.2 percent in 2008-09.
- Looking strictly at results from End-of-Course exams, all types of innovative schools measured gains in composite scores from last year that exceeded those for all North Carolina schools combined, including the innovative schools and middle schools, which typically reflect only Algebra 1 exams taken by high achieving students. NCNSP schools combined had a gain of 14.2 percentage points, compared to a gain of 9.5 points for all schools administering EOC exams. Redesigned high schools showed a gain of 13.5 points from their performance for 2008-09.
- About seven of every 10 innovative high schools (71.7 percent) had a performance composite greater than 80 percent, compared to 41.5 percent of comparison schools and 50.9 percent of all traditional 9-12 high schools.
- Nearly three of every four innovative high schools (73.6 percent) achieved adequate yearly progress under the federal No Child Left Behind law, essentially unchanged from 2008-09, which 73.7percent did so. One third (33.9 percent) of traditional 9-12 high schools in 2009-10 met standards for adequate yearly progress.
- Nine of 10 innovative high schools that were open in 2008-09 improved their performance composites in 2009-10, and two thirds of them (77.4 percent) exceeded the performance composites of their comparison schools.
- Six of 106 innovative schools (5.7percent) had performance composites less than 60 percent, down from 22 percent of schools in 2008-09.
- For the second consecutive year, the gains for redesign high schools were among the most significant among North Carolina’s innovative high schools. The percentage of the 27 schools open in 2009-10 and meeting their targets for expected student gains increased from 30 percent in 2008-09 to 66.7 percent in 2009-10. The median performance composite for the 27 schools increased from 62.5 percent in 2008-09 to 72.5 percent this past year. One third of the schools also met their targets for high growth, a significant increase from the 9.3 percent of the redesigned schools that did so in 2008-09.
