North Carolina’s statewide average test proficiency rates are still behind pre-pandemic levels across all subjects except for fourth-grade reading and fourth-grade math, new data from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction shows.

But North Carolina students are making big gains in math, even though they remain behind the proficiency rates of 2018 and 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools to in-person learning for a year, the new data shows.

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Third- through eighth-grade students take math and reading tests. Fifth-grade and eighth-grade students take science tests.

At the high school level, some students take Math 1, Math 3, English II and Biology.

Science tests changed last year, after the state updated its standards. North Carolina Department of Public Instruction officials say the new science standards are more rigorous and contain more expectations for student learning. That means the new science test results can’t be compared to the old results on an apples-to-apples basis.

Many of the state’s school districts were exempt from being a part of the school accountability program for the fall of 2024 state tests because they missed too many days of school in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. Many of those districts also eventually lost students when their families moved to other counties, but DPI officials believe that number of students to be too low to also exempt their new school districts from the accountability program.

Another change last year is that schools had fewer resources to work toward improving students’ proficiency. From 2021 until 2024, North Carolina’s public schools received more than $6 billion in federal Covid-19 relief dollars, more than $1 billion of which was set aside by the schools for learning recovery. That included tutoring, intervention teachers, learning coaches and other programs during the summer and after school.

The 2024-25 school year was the first post-pandemic without those dollars. Many of the employees were cut or reassigned back to more basic roles. So the work that powered increases in proficiency rates since 2022 isn't being done at the same scale anymore or sometimes even at all.