Terry Stoops

A study of the implementation of a soda tax on sugar-sweetened beverages sold in Oakland, CA suggests that it didn’t.  Here is the abstract of “Oakland’s Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Tax: Impacts on Prices, Purchases and Consumption by Adults and Children,” a recent NBER working paper: Several cities in the U.S.

Education Week released the 2019 Quality Counts Report Card.  The report card evaluates state public school systems using three categories: Chance for Success, School Finance, and K-12 Achievement. North Carolina earned a C+ for Chance for Success, a D for School Finance, and a C- for K-12 Achievement.  The…

Whenever you hear complaints about Innovative School District and charter schools (particularly virtual charter schools) that earn low school performance grades, remember that those grades “fail to account for the many factors that contribute to, and greatly inhibit overall student success.”…

Title I schools have a high concentration of disadvantaged students and receive additional funds from the federal government to serve them. Below is a list of Title I schools that received an A or B grade for the performance of economically disadvantaged students (subgroup) on state standardized tests. District…

North Carolina assigns school performance grades to all public schools.  The grades are based on student achievement (80 percent of total grade) and growth (20 percent of total grade). In the past, the N.C. Department of Public Instruction published comparisons of district and charter grade distributions, but they…

Yeah, I know.  Graduation rates are not test scores. The four-year “cohort” graduation rate is the percentage of students who enter ninth grade and graduate four years later.  Last year, 86.5 percent of students graduated with their freshman cohort in four years.  This was slightly higher than the 2017-18 cohort…

Proficiency is one way to measure student performance.  Growth is another.  While proficiency is determined by the number of questions answered correctly, growth captures performance relative to scores on previous tests.  A student may not reach proficiency, but they may demonstrate positive growth.  Likewise, a student may be proficient,…

The N.C. Department of Public Instruction released state test scores for all public schools.  I’ll share some of the highlights on the Locker Room blog throughout the day. Students in grades 3-8 statewide (reading): 57.2 percent of students in grades 3-8 were considered Grade Level Proficient (GLP).  This…