NC School Report Card Welcome Letter

Dear Parents and Guardians:

Chatham County Schools is pleased to share information about your child’s school based on data from the 2021-2022 academic year. The North Carolina School Report Card, generated by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, offers a range of information about individual schools and the district as a whole.

The online report card is interactive, giving parents a variety of options for reviewing data results. If, for instance, you would like to see how a particular population fared at an individual school, you will have the tools to access that data. Additionally, the report card will include Read to Achieve results, and a variety of information about college readiness (ACT scores, WorkKeys data, and college success rates for individual schools).These standards aim to provide a deeper understanding of curriculum that is essential to student success upon graduation from high school. Holding students to these standards will enable us to prepare a generation that is college and workforce ready.

Please be assured that Chatham County Schools already has in place and will continue to develop and implement a multitude of programs that are designed to support and enhance instruction while increasing positive outcomes for our students. As you can see from this year’s report card, we are a very competitive school district.

Chatham outperforms the state in virtually every grade level and subject. Specifically, Chatham had the following areas of success:

• 89% of our schools met or exceeded growth (17 schools).
  
  
• 100% of K-8 school met or exceeded growth expectations
  
  
• 74% of CCS schools earned a School Performance Grade of C or better
  
  
• 89% Increased overall performance composite
  
  
• We are ranked 21st when compared to all 115 districts in North Carolina for overall proficiency composite for all subjects
  
  
• Some schools had composite increases of 10-20 points.
  
  
• 78% of CCS schools exceeded the state’s overall performance composite growth.

• CCS outperformed the state in every measure in K-8.
  
  
• CCS outperformed the state in ACT, Workeys, Biology, English 2, math course rigor, and the 5-year graduation rate.
  
  
• CCS overall proficiency composite was 4 points above the state’s overall proficiency.
  
  
• We are third in our North Central Region when comparing overall proficiency composite for all subjects.
  
  
• The state saw a decrease in the graduation rate.
  
  
• The state saw a large increase in schools that are designated as low performing.

• Chatham County Schools’ long-standing history of ACT success was not interrupted by the pandemic. Chatham’s composite outperformed the state by over 11 points.  CCS also ranked 10th in the state out of 115 districts.
  
  

The accountability report for the 2021-22 school year is the first since 2018-19 to feature all components of the state’s accountability framework, including the calculation of A-F School Performance Grades and growth designations.

For a broader view, information from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction notes that about seven of every 10 schools achieved at least expected growth last year.

As projected earlier this year in an analysis by the Department of Public Instruction’s Office of Learning Recovery and Acceleration, many North Carolina students will require months of additional learning time, possibly over several years, because of disruptions forced by the pandemic. The performance of North Carolina students during the 2021-22 school year also mirrors trends reported in recent weeks by several other states that also showed declines from pre-pandemic performance levels.

Because of the overall drop in A-F performance grades for the 2021-22 school year, the number of low performing schools increased significantly from the 2018-19 year, when schools were last identified, according to DPI.

For 2021-22, 864 schools across the state have been identified as low performing, up from 488 in 2018-19. The number of low-performing districts increased to 29 from eight in 2018-19. Chatham County Schools was not among the low-performing districts.

I am proud of how well Chatham County Schools students and staff did this past year. There is always room for improvement, but in the context of how districts across the state fared, it really reflects how hard the members of the CCS family worked to ensure our students were learning and growing academically.

The report card does not fully reflect all of the excellent educational experiences taking place daily in Chatham County Schools. We will continue to assess our efforts and identify opportunities for improvement. If you have any feedback or ideas, please do not hesitate to contact your child’s principal. As always, thank you for your support.

Sincerely,

Dr. Anthony Jackson
Superintendent
Chatham County Schools