Two schools didn’t meet expected growth under the state’s ABCs of Education accountability plan, the results show. One school met expected growth.

Kannapolis City Schools released preliminary end-of-grade test results Wednesday for the system’s five elementary schools and Kannapolis Middle School.

The scores won’t become official until the state Department of Public Instruction verifies them and the state Board of Education approves them in August.

Results of end-of-course tests for A.L. Brown High School aren’t yet available.

According to the results, Fred L. Wilson, Forest Park and Woodrow Wilson elementary schools exceeded the state’s expected academic growth by at least 10 percent, making them exemplary schools.

This is the third straight year that Woodrow Wilson has shown exemplary growth. Forest Park and Fred L. Wilson were exemplary in 1997-98, with Fred L. Wilson among the top 25 schools in the state for academic growth.

Students at Jackson Park Elementary met the state’s standard for expected growth. Shady Brook Elementary and Kannapolis Middle, while they showed growth, didn’t meet expected growth, the second straight year the middle school hasn’t.

“These preliminary results show that we are improving student achievement, and we are pleased about that” Superintendent Dr. Ed Tyson said. “However, we are not satisfied with where we are. We are looking carefully at the results so we can make even greater improvements next year.”

Under the state’s ABCs plan, teachers at schools that met expected and exemplary growth will get bonuses. The school system’s administration will work with administrative teams from the other schools this summer to improve next year.

“We just received the information, so we’re looking really hard at the data,” said Dr. Jo Anne Byerly, assistant superintendent. “We’re going to delve into it this summer and really try to look at where we need to improve.”

The ABCs plan is based on a numeric scale that begins when a student is in third grade. The scale continues throughout the student’s academic career.

Each year, end-of-grade reading and math tests determine how much students have learned over the previous year by how far they progress on that scale.

Averaging the scores of all students in a particular school gives the state a picture of how a school is doing each year in providing instruction.

And that means that while a particular grade can meet or even exceed the state’s expected growth on a test — as Shady Brook’s third-graders did on the reading test — the school still can miss the state’s mark.

The tests also measure how many students score at or above grade level — who is proficient — on the reading and math tests in grades 3 through 8, and on writing tests in grades 4 and 7.

System-wide this year:

• 72.4 percent of third-graders, 72.8 percent of fourth-graders and 76.8 percent of fifth-graders were proficient in reading, according to the unofficial results.
• In math, 77.1 percent of third-graders, 86.8 percent of fourth-graders and 81.2 percent of fifth- graders scored at or above grade level in the system.
• At the middle school, 63.3 percent of sixth-graders, 67.7 percent of seventh-graders and 77.5 percent of eighth-graders were proficient in reading.
• In math, 74.5 percent of sixth-graders, 81.7 percent of seventh- graders and 80.2 percent of eighth- graders were proficient on the test.

Writing-test scores in fourth and seventh grades dropped considerably this year from last year’s scores.

On the test taken in March, 41.3 percent of fourth-graders scored at or above where the state says they should. Last year, 57.6 percent of fourth-graders hit that mark.

In seventh grade, 54.9 percent of students taking the writing test scored as proficient or better. Last year, that number was 64.2 percent.

“We’ve traditionally had very good writing scores,” Byerly said. “I’m thinking this is just a one-year dip and we certainly going to work hard to get those scores back up to where they’ve been in the past.”

She points out that different sets of students take the tests each year. But she said the school system began a K-2 writing program this year to prepare students for those tests.