Education
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Deciding which educational pathway to pursue is often a daunting decision for a high schooler transitioning to postsecondary education. There are many questions a student must ask. Do I want to pursue a credential or a degree awarding program? What are the employment and earnings outcomes for each? What programs are most likely to see me employed five years after graduation? What are their median salaries? Knowing the answers to these questions and weighing it…
Carolina Demography's director, Nathan Dollar, recently participated in the NC Business Summit on Public Education hosted by the Public School Forum of North Carolina. His slides were adapted for this piece, which was originally published by EdNC. Who are North Carolina’s public school students? by Mebane Rash, Nathan Dollar, Mary Ann Wolf and Lanie Sorrow, EducationNC February 19, 2024 We all have an image in our heads of a public school student. Often that image…
Most students are promoted to the next grade level at the end of a school year. But some students are asked to repeat a grade level. The academic term for this is “grade retention”, or “non-promotion.” These terms are used interchangeably in this article. My initial motivation for writing this piece came from investigating school performance indicators pre- and post-pandemic, which I did in a previous piece regarding chronic absenteeism. As I investigated the publicly…
Teacher diversity has been found to be linked to improved educational outcomes for all students, with more targeted gains for students of color. Specifically, having a same-race teacher is associated with improved test scores, grades, and attendance, as well as a higher probability of taking advanced math courses, being selected for gifted and talented programs, graduating high school, and enrolling in college. Despite demographic shifts with the state population overall, data suggest there’s still a…
This blog post is part of a series on how to use the North Carolina Public Schools Statistical Profile. This blog post details how to download different indicators at the school level. We also have tutorials for how to download indicators at the state and district levels. The North Carolina Public Schools Statistical Profile (NCPSSP) is a great resource for obtaining data on North Carolina’s public school students, personnel and finances. This profile is especially…
This blog post is part of a series on how to use the North Carolina Public Schools Statistical Profile. This blog post details how to download different indicators at the state level. We also have tutorials for how to download indicators at the district and school levels. The North Carolina Public Schools Statistical Profile (NCPSSP) is a great resource for obtaining data on North Carolina’s public school students, personnel and finances. This profile is especially…
This blog post is part of a series on how to use the North Carolina Public Schools Statistical Profile. This blog post details how to download different indicators at the district level. We also have tutorials for how to download indicators at the state and school levels. The North Carolina Public Schools Statistical Profile (NCPSSP) is a great resource for obtaining data on North Carolina’s public school students, personnel and finances. This profile is especially…
Chronic absenteeism is a metric that’s closely monitored by school districts, because it can be a sign that students are out of school so much that it can affect their academic progress. In this post, we talk about how the pandemic has affected student attendance data. First, a definition: Chronic absenteeism is the percent of public K-12 students who missed ten percent or more of school days in a year. We calculate chronic absenteeism using…
Results from the National Assessment of Student Progress (NAEP), known also as the Nation’s Report Card, have been getting a lot of attention over the past month. The US Secretary of Education has called the results “unacceptable.” North Carolina’s Superintendent, Catherine Truitt, said the results were unsurprising, given the COVID-19 impact on K-12 learning in the state. What did the results show? National 2022 test scores showed an average decline of 5 points in reading…
With myFutureNC, we have released the 2022 County Attainment Profiles which highlights specific opportunities for improvement that will ultimately lead to increased attainment. The profiles highlight each of North Carolina’s 100 counties’ educational attainment levels and performance on key myFutureNC metrics in order to assist in the decision-making process regarding local priorities to increase educational attainment at the local level. There is also an overall 2022 attainment profile for the state. Each 2022 County Attainment…
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