Statewide test scores for schools will be released Wednesday morning, revealing new information about how the state's schools are performing.
Data about standardized testing results is expected to be released at 10 a.m. Look for a breakdown of the results county-by-county and for individual schools on pugongyingbo.com once the data is released.
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The scores will indicate how well schools are adapting after losing COVID-19 pandemic funding and how well students have improved from pandemic learning loss.
According to WRAL education reporter Emily Walkenhorst, following the pandemic, schools received a big influx in funding that was used to help students catch up academically. More than $1 billion was spent on things like tutoring, intervention teachers, learning coaches and other programs during the summer and after school.
Test results from 2024 revealed, in some cases, that districts on average were performing better than before the pandemic, but results vary by school.
In Wake County, past results reveal reading proficiency among students rose slightly in the last year to 61%.
Statewide in 2024, however, proficiency rates were still not back to pre-pandemic levels, which was not surprising.
"State education officials and a lot of national experts said it would take years for students to recover," Walkenhorst said. "The state was particularly concerned about seventh and eighth grade students last year. They've done some things since then, like new math initiatives in some rural high-needs middle schools."
The school test scores look at what percentage of students tested proficiently.
"The state gives multiple versions of each test every year, so they turn the results into these scale scores when they combine all of the results," Walkenhorst said. "We're really looking at common data. It's a way of measuring whether they've learned what the state wants them to and how ready every student is to move onto the next grade level."