RALEIGH — Midyear literacy assessment results presented at the May meeting of the North Carolina State Board of Education show continued improvement for K-3 students over last fall’s results.
The results were compiled by Amy Rhyne, the Department of Public Instruction’s senior director of the Office of Early Learning, and presented by board member Jill Camnitz, who co-chairs the Student Learning and Achievement Committee.
“We see substantial kindergarten growth from the beginning of the year to the middle of the year and moderate growth in grades 1 and 2 with third grade holding steady,” Camnitz said. “In all grades, North Carolina exceeded the national numbers. Subgroups outperformed or at least equal the national data.”
The reporting of the Amplify Formative Diagnostic Reading Assessment results is a requirement of the 2021 Excellent Public Schools Act. The act required the use of the “Science of Reading,” defined as “evidenced-based reading instruction practices that address the acquisition of language, phonological and phonemic awareness, phonics and spelling, fluency, vocabulary, oral language, and comprehension that can be differentiated to meet the needs of individual students.”
To support the Science of Reading, former N.C. State Superintendent Catherine Truitt implemented teacher training in Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS). LETRS, which follows phonics-based reading instruction methods, quickly produced positive results for K-3 students and continued substantial gains for kindergarteners.
The data presented during the meeting shows North Carolina students are scoring higher than national averages in most categories, with kindergarteners scoring 21% higher on middle of the year testing (MOY) over beginning of the year (BOY) scores.
Kindergartener MOY results were also 2% higher than the national scores. North Carolina kindergarteners were behind national scores by 5% in BOY results.
Grades 1 and 3, which were just ahead of national scores in BOY testing, increased their scores in MOY testing. Grade three MOY testing was equal to national scores.
K-3 students in the state are assessed using DIBELS 8, which includes assessing students’ proficiency in phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle, fluency with connected text, vocabulary and comprehension.
Demographically, the state’s students improved over their BOY scores across the board by seven percentage points.
Black students gained four, Hispanics gained five and American Indian/Alaskan Natives gained the most with nine. White students’ MOY results rose 8% over BOY, and Asian students gained three.
Camnitz also said that reviewing the past four years of data, the state continues to have fewer students scoring below the benchmark and more students with results at or above benchmarks in each testing cycle.
According to the presentation, compared to BOY results, 28,943 more students scored at or above benchmarks in MOY testing, bringing the total achieving benchmark levels to 249,182 students.
Despite the gains, MOY results showed 19,331 students (27%) are still “well below” benchmarks.
Compared to testing in 2021-22, there are 46,134 more students at or above benchmark and 35,982 fewer students below benchmark.
“We also looked at data on progress monitoring,” said Camnitz. “Which indicates the need to increase the number of at-risk students who are receiving this critical monitoring, which, again, informs the classroom instruction for individual students.”
Per the presentation shared with the board, 10% of the most at-risk students (13,868) never had their progress monitored. Progress monitoring for “well below benchmark” students is recommended every two weeks, but data suggests this isn’t happening consistently.
Recommendations to continue literacy improvement included tying instruction and “high-quality” materials to the Science of Reading and a reemphasis to all districts and teachers that instruction aligned to the Science of Reading must include word recognition and language comprehension.
