Folks in Lee County have had a lot to say about my blog post, Growth scores indicate crisis at Lee HS, Newton-Conover MS.

Because there has been so much interest, I thought that I would talk about all schools in Lee County, not just Lee County High School.  The following is a scatterplot of all schools in Lee County available on the EVAAS website:

Screen Shot 2015-09-04 at 11.45.01 AMObviously, the school on the far left is Lee County High School and this shows just how much of an outlier it is.  Nevertheless, four schools occupy the -8 to -6 range, which falls well short of meeting growth expectations on state tests.  Those schools are Southern Lee High School, Lee Early College, SanLee Middle School, and Bragg Street Academy.

I think it is fair to exclude Bragg Street Academy, an alternative school for troubled students, from the discussion.

I was most surprised to see Lee Early College here.  In general, North Carolina’s early colleges, which are small high schools situated on community college campuses, have done very well.  I noticed that the Lee Early College students are on a 4×4 block schedule to accommodate the community college calendar.  One problem with block schedules is that courses completed in the first half of the year may not be tested until the end of the school year.  Students may not retain that information over the intervening months.  I do not know if that is happening here.

I do not know much about SanLee Middle and Southern Lee High and therefore will not speculate about why they struggled to meet growth last year.  But there is an interesting theme emerging here.

For the most part, elementary and middle schools in Lee County are doing fine.  West Lee Middle, as well as Deep River, Greenwood, and Edwards elementary schools, met growth.   Bullock Elementary and Ingram Elementary just missed hitting their growth target.  East Lee Middle did not meet their growth expectation but has made impressive progress toward that goal.  Tramway and Broadway elementary schools have some work to do.

So, what is going on at Lee County high schools?  Three of the four worst performers serve high school students.  Again, I am not an expert on Lee County Schools, but I do find it odd that there is such a drop-off in the high school grades.