By Maggie Blackwell
mblackwell@salisburypost.com
Students in Rowan-Salisbury Schools will receive report cards from the state Thursday showing how well their schools fared on testing in 2007-2008.
The report cards compare each school to the Rowan-Salisbury system at large and to the state average.
In math, the three highest-scoring elementary schools ó Faith, Bostian and Enochville ó showed marked increases over last year.
The lowest scores were earned by Hanford Dole, Isenberg and Koontz. All of these schools have had flat performance over the past few years.
At the middle school level, West, Erwin and Corriher-Lipe achieved the highest math scores. Each of these schools has risen steadily in performance over the last three years.
Low scorers Knox and Southeast have shown fairly flat performance for the past three years.
Rowan-Salisbury’s math scores are higher overall than they were last year for grades 3 through 8, gaining 5 percentage points. The gap between RSS and the state, while still wide, has narrowed slightly.
Rowan-Salisbury Schools averaged 61.3 percent of students at or above grade level. Most neighboring school systems performed better.
– Iredell-Statesville: 79 percent
– Davie: 78 percent
– Davidson: 75.3 percent
– Stanly: 74.1 percent
– Cabarrus: 73 percent
– Kannapolis City: 60.2 percent
– N.C. state average: 69.9 percent.
All students take end-of-grade tests as a measure for the No Child Left Behind program. Schools are measured by how many students make a score of 3 or 4 on the tests. A grade of 3 indicates a student is working at grade level; 4 indicates a student is working above grade level. A school is considered to be at higher performance when a large number of students score at or above their grade level.
Performance at elementary schools is a critical concern in school systems, as students need to have a firm grasp of the basics early on in order to perform well in later years.
Students take end-of-grade tests for the first time in third grade.
In addition to detailing end-of-grade reading and math scores by grade, the report cards give other information, such as statistics on how safe the school is and the number of highly qualified teachers.