Over half of North Carolina students are proficient in reading, according to a Department of Public Instruction report released today.
It only took 10 years for the state to raise reading standards, although state testing standards are not what I would call rigorous.
At the Department of Public Instruction/State Board of Education press conference today, I asked Dr. Lou Fabrizio (DPI testing guy) how many test items students need to answer correctly to be labeled “proficient” and how that compares to last year.
Lou responded that two years ago, a student would have to answer between 45 and 55 percent of the questions correctly to achieve proficiency on the state reading test. Last year, a student would have to answer between 65 and 75 percent of questions correctly to achieve proficiency. This is a decent improvement. But we should have done this years ago, raising standards so that they align with the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests.
