How Charlotte Tops Big Cities In School Tests
Among the participating urban districts, Charlotte, with 124,000 students, had the highest scores in all categories except eighth-grade math, where it tied with Austin, Texas. Charlotte's fourth-graders beat the average for all schools in math, with a score of 244 (on a 0-to-500 scale), seven points above the average. In reading, the fourth-graders' average score was 221, four points above the national average.
Districts in the urban NAEP -- including Atlanta, Boston, Cleveland, and New York City -- face some of the nation's biggest challenges because a high proportion of their students are from low-income and minority families.
Charlotte was the only participating district that beat the national average for fourth-grade reading. Only Austin and Charlotte beat the national average on eighth-grade reading.
How Charlotte Tops Big Cities In School Tests
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 2, 2005; Page B1
Laura Aiken, a fourth-grade teacher at the Montclaire Elementary School, in Charlotte, N.C., knows whether her students are mastering state reading standards long before they take mandatory year-end exams.
After each quarter, she gives the children a small, 30-question test designed by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district. Within a week, Ms. Aiken gets back a computer-generated report indicating, in percentages, how well her students understand basic reading skills, such as how to summarize information or make inferences. "It gives me a snapshot of every student," says Ms. Aiken, who can immediately send low-performers to reading specialists for help.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg administrators say that such data crunching and early intervention is one reason their district scored so well on a new round of federal tests designed to compare reading and math achievement in 11 urban school districts with the scores of public-school students nationwide....
posted by Whitney Tilson at 10:17 AM
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