How to read school data

When you open a school detail page here you’ll see three numbers from NC DPI’s annual School Report Card: a School Performance Grade (A–F), a growth status (Exceeded / Met / Not Met), and an achievement score. They’re computed the same way for every Wake public school, published every year, and derived from data the state is legally required to collect.

They’re also a thin slice of a much bigger picture, and the math behind them is weirder than it looks. Here’s the short version of what they actually measure.

School Performance Grade (A–F)

NC’s formula is 80% achievement score + 20% growth score. That is — 80% of a school’s grade is a snapshot of how many students passed state tests this year, and 20% is how much students improved compared to expectations.

That 80/20 weighting is controversial. It means a school serving mostly wealthy kids who arrive already at grade level can earn an A while doing almost nothing to move them forward. And a school in a high-poverty neighborhood where kids show up two grade levels behind can post Exceeded growth every year and still earn a D because the achievement floor is what dominates the letter grade.

The letter grade is highly correlated with the household income of the school’s catchment. If two schools are in similarly wealthy neighborhoods, the grade difference is meaningful. If they’re in very different neighborhoods, the grade mostly tells you what you already knew about the addresses.

Growth (the more useful number)

“Growth” is the state’s EVAAS model — it asks: given each student’s prior test history, did they progress more or less than statistically expected this year?

• Exceeded: students progressed meaningfully faster than expected
• Met: students progressed roughly on track
• Not Met: students progressed more slowly than expected

Growth is the single best signal we have for how well a school is actually teaching children — because it controls for where kids started. A high-poverty school with “Exceeded” growth is probably doing real instructional work. A wealthy school with “Not Met” growth is coasting on the families it serves.

If you only look at one number, look at growth, not the letter grade.

Achievement score

This is the raw “what percent of students are at grade level on state tests.” It’s what drives 80% of the letter grade. Useful context, but again, heavily influenced by what students brought with them.

What these numbers don’t capture

• Teacher quality and retention. A school with great teachers and high churn can show flat numbers for years while real things are happening inside classrooms.
• Fit for your child. A child who thrives in small, quiet rooms will have a different experience at a 2,500-student magnet than a 300-student charter, regardless of either school’s letter grade.
• Culture and climate. How schools handle bullying, inclusion, neurodivergent students, English learners, and special education varies enormously within the same letter grade.
• Specialty programs. AIG/GT, dual-language immersion, arts, STEM pathways — none of these are reflected in the A–F.
• The actual day. Recess time, homework load, how tests are administered, start time, bus schedule, lunch — the things that make up your child’s actual life at a school — aren’t in the data.

How to use the numbers on this site

1. Start with growth. Is the school moving kids, or just taking credit for where they arrived?
2. Use the letter grade as one input among many. Don’t let it dominate.
3. Visit the school. Tour. Ask questions. Talk to current parents. Schools within the same letter grade can feel completely different.
4. Look for patterns across multiple years. One-year dips are noise; three-year trends are signal. NC DPI’s public Report Cards portal ↗ shows multi-year history.

Where these numbers come from on this site

• Grade, score, growth, achievement, enrollment: NC DPI’s School Report Card dataset, 2023-24 — the most recent year published. Refreshed once per year. NC DPI is the authoritative source.
• Our calculations: none. We don’t re-weight or re-rank. The number you see here is the number DPI publishes.
• Charter + private schools: not covered by the DPI dataset. Charters have their own report cards at NC DPI’s charter page ↗. Privates aren’t in any state accountability system — ask the school directly for standardized test results.

If you want to double-check any of our numbers, the DPI portal above lets you pull up any school and see the same data with more historical detail.