SC report card shows how Rock Hill region schools performed during the pandemic
New South Carolina school data shows the youngest students have been most negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. But there’s a bigger question.
“The question here is not so much about these results,” said state education superintendent Molly Spearman, “but what are we going to do about them?”
On Wednesday the education department released school and district report cards along with standardized test results. Spearman said Tuesday that COVID-19 challenges threw so many variables into public education since early 2020, that it doesn’t make sense to compare the recent data with years past.
Yet there are trends.
“I was not shocked at the results,” she said, “but I am very very concerned with the results.”
Learning loss, or the lack of in-classroom learning in the first place, hit youngest students the hardest. The state will use the new data to plan accelerated learning, identify education gaps and see where more resources are needed. The state needs to be supportive and not punitive, Spearman said.
“It’s going to take more than one year to recover from these new circumstances,” she said.
In past conversations on the COVID impact, from virtual learning models to sick children, Spearman mentioned students may be a few months behind where they would be without the pandemic. Test scores don’t equate evenly to months lost, she said, but it’s clear there are many students behind where they should be.
“It is more than two to three months,” Spearman said.
Elementary school results
No area school district hit the 50% mark on kindergarten readiness, an assessment given at the start of kindergarten to gauge skills and behaviors needed to succeed based on kindergarten standards. Fort Mill had the highest readiness mark among area districts at 49.6%. Next were Clover (38.3%), Rock Hill (29.9%), Lancaster County (18.4%), York (17.8%) and Chester County (17.2%).
Fort Mill scored 50% in the math portion, followed by Clover (39.5%), Rock Hill (29.2%), Lancaster County (23.2%), York (21.3%) and Chester County (19.9%). Language and literacy scores saw Fort Mill (48.5%) followed by Clover (41.2%), Rock Hill (35.8%), York (26.7%), Chester County (25.1%) and Lancaster County (24.6%).
Four of six area districts had more than half of first-graders on track for success in math as a second-grader. Fort Mill (63%), Chester County (57.4%), Rock Hill (53.8%), Clover (53.4%) hit that mark. Lancaster County (39.6%) and York (17.6%) didn’t. Only one district scored better than half among those same students, in language arts. Fort Mill (64.9%) led Clover (36.4%), Rock Hill (33.5%), Chester County (27.1%), York (22.1%) and Lancaster County (20.6%).
Second-graders on track for success as third-graders in math hit (64.7%) in Fort Mill, followed by Clover (52.4%), Rock Hill (50.6%), Chester County (40.1%), Lancaster County (38.9%) and York (18.6%). Language arts came in at 69.5% in Fort Mill, then Rock Hill (43.2%), Clover (35.1%), Lancaster County (33.7%), Chester County (29.9%) and York (24.3%).
SC Ready
The SC Ready test for grades 3-8 measures college and career readiness tracking for math and language arts. Less than 43% of students statewide met or exceeded standards for the language arts portion. About 37% of students met or exceeded math standards.
Fort Mill and Clover surpassed the state mark on language arts, while Lancaster County hit it almost squarely. Rock Hill fell just below the state average. For math, Fort Mill, Clover and Lancaster all exceeded the state figure. Rock Hill fell just below it.
English 1 and Algebra 1, first year high school level classes, saw just 63% of statewide students in English and almost 47% in algebra score a C grade or higher.
Fort Mill and Clover outpaced the state in both classes. Lancaster and Rock Hill each fared better than the state figure for algebra.
Graduation rates
All three Fort Mill high schools graduated more than 94% of students on time, best in the area. Clover and Lewisville high schools also topped 90%. The lowest graduation rate was at Chester High School, at less than 73%.
Demographic data related to high school graduation shows females graduate at a higher percentage than males, while Black and Hispanic populations see lower rates in some places than White students. Females at Great Falls and Asian students at Fort Mill high schools each had a 100% graduation rate. Great Falls, at 90.91%, is the only high school with a 90% or greater graduation rate among students in poverty.
COVID school impact
Overall, Spearman said, high performance districts tended to stay there. The C student saw decline. Underserved areas saw drop-offs, and early elementary grades struggled.
The main step schools can take to prevent learning loss is to keep students in schools, something Spearman sees tied to vaccination and social distancing rules.
“The resistance to get vaccinated, to follow all the safety protocols, is not helping the situation,” she said.
Financial incentives and pay increases for teachers are a step, she said, and resources have to be in place to help teachers statewide make up for learning loss with students.
“Our focus is on our earliest learners,” Spearman said.
Standardized tests aim to take out variables, to score data evenly based on a common experience. Yet, Spearman said, these tests went to students who never missed a day of face-to-face learning and others who were all virtual or completed paper work packages. There were families with job loss and COVID sickness. It’s difficult, she said, to take the context of what students and families have endured out of the raw number results.
“There’s such a range of how COVID impacted students last year,” Spearman said.
