Ds + Fs = Low-Performing District

It would be easy to hurl a scathing bunch of similes and metaphors to describe the shock and horror of the report card Wayne County Public Schools brought home this week.

And it would be just as easy to start finger-pointing about who is responsible for the slew of Ds and Fs and the number of schools that either did not meet expectations of improvement or whose score increases would barely have pushed a needle to the next tick on the scale.

But we aren’t going to do that, because, frankly, we can’t.

We are worried. And you should be, too.

Because, truly, this is an emergency — and not just because of the potential impact being designated a “Low-Performing District” could have on the county’s economic future, but because of the devastating life results for the nearly 20,000 children whose education we as a community have promised to provide.

We know what it means when a child cannot read at grade level in third grade — let alone in middle school and, God forbid, high school.

We know the doors it closes and the limitations it puts on future success.

We know it means they cannot compete. We know it sets a pattern of learning roadblocks that build upon each other and that can eventually end in failure or dropping out.

We know that setting a culture of excusing away poor or mediocre performance leads to students who get to college with inflated grades and expectations that often don’t meet reality.

So, when we learn that only four schools in this county out of 32 have more than 51 percent of their students scoring at or above grade level in reading or English, we are stunned.

And that some of them, many of them, have students scoring below 35 percent and that one was only able to muster 19 percent — well, that’s just unbelievable.

When you see scores like that, you know that the same old explanations are not going to be enough anymore.

The crows of “meeting growth” — an increase in scores from last year — will not overshadow the stark reality of the real numbers, the real grades.

Nor will the, “Look at the state average.”

Just because others are struggling doesn’t mean we have to be too — not if we have been making decisions that would result in excellence.

Yes, the COVID lockdowns and the upheaval they caused for students were catastrophic. At-home learning might have been a necessary evil, but it took a heavy toll.

So yes, there is some loss reflected in the scores still two full years later — but not everywhere.

Other districts in the state were able to move forward significantly, not to full recovery, but at least out of the woods.

We didn’t.

And we didn’t with millions of dollars in fancy reading programs and “consumable” workbooks that focused on computer-assisted learning rather than good, old-fashioned teaching.

They aren’t working.

We know. All you have to do to find out for yourself is to check the real performance statistics — and to ask the teachers.

New books. Fancy presentations by an educational products company. A flurry of teacher training and a bunch of students sitting in front of computers figuring out how to beat the tests. Teachers unable to buck the high-dollar programs they know aren’t working.

Not much learning going on there.

The proof is in the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction’s report.

But you should expect that when the presentation is made about these scores, the person in charge of the curriculum that is being measured — the one who recommended millions in spending on those shiny new “learning tools” — will talk about improvement, growth, and the hard work being done in the schools.

We have sat through more than a few of those presentations by others in our time.

They are garbage and spin.

You don’t keep your job if you don’t spin pretty fast when stats like this hit the news.

No one, NO ONE, wants to talk about what is really going on.

And yes, there is a lot going on.

Let’s start with what happens when your financial woes and spending on consultants and fancy lawyers force you to cut the number of teachers to the state’s bare minimum.

Classes increase and already-swamped teachers find themselves without the time or manpower to meet the needs of the students whom they know are already struggling, let alone to challenge those who could catch up and move forward briskly with the right push.

Let’s add to that a problem that is occurring more and more in schools here and across the country — the rise in behavior issues, serious ones, and the lack of action by administrators to fix them.

It is not really a surprise that the school with the lowest percentage of students who can perform at grade level in English II — that’s 10^th grade by the way — is Goldsboro High School.

Those scores were 19 percent. That means more than 80 percent of Goldsboro High students cannot read well enough to complete a 10^thgrade assignment.

Think they had to retake the course so they could catch up? Think again.

Does anyone believe that their literacy woes are going to magically fix themselves when they are graduating seniors?

Some of the evidence of why there are problems at Goldsboro High is all over social media — just look up the fights — but there are other problems at that school that are significant and serious.

That’s why some of their finest educators are gone, and most refuse when a transfer order comes down from Central Office.

They know how hard it is to teach students who want to learn in the chaos caused by those who are not held accountable.

And Goldsboro is not the only place that is happening. Look up Eastern Wayne and fights, too, and the disciplinary records at all of the county schools. You’ll find this is about far more than “kids being kids.”

But there is another scary score set.

There are three middle schools in this county — Brogden, Grantham and Dillard — where less than 26 percent of students can read at grade level. That means nearly 75 percent can’t.

Want to know what happens when they get to high school?

Look at the scores at Southern Wayne, Eastern Wayne, Spring Creek, and Goldsboro high schools.

There’s your answer.

And there is another truth that you should know.

Do you think for one minute that any of these tests are as difficult as one you might have had to pass when you were in school? No way.

Each year, experienced teachers say, the tests are dumbed down.

And still, there are scores like these.

When this sort of news comes out, there is a flurry of “faux outrage” designed to make those who are asking the questions and who are pointing out the obvious back off.

The first is that teachers and administrators are working as hard as they can under difficult circumstances. Yes, some of them are.

The second is that students will feel bad if they read about the quality of their performance and give up.

Think of it as the snowflake rule. Students are just too delicate to hear the reality of what test scores like these really mean for their futures and their lives.

Yes, it is hard to hear that you have to step up, that you are expected to do better, to meet a standard, to behave like young men and women of character and integrity.

There used to be standards like that right here in Wayne County — an expected level of behavior and effort.

Just ask anyone who went to Charles B. Aycock High School when Dr. Earl Moore was its principal.

Ask Dillard/Goldsboro Alumni about Dr. H.V. Brown.

They will tell you what expectations are — and what happens when they are the rule rather than a work-around.

We have to have that again.

And it starts with telling the truth — without the distraction of the social posturing that has garbled what education should be about: reading, writing and arithmetic, with social studies, history, and the arts mixed in.

We can’t just accept the status quo anymore. We can’t sit back and watch as poor hiring, easy answers to complex questions, and low expectations set an even lower bar.

We owe our children more than that.

And we won’t get it until we demand it.

Accountability starts with truth-telling.

And we need that now.

And because truth is important here, let’s just say this — we did not even talk about the math scores.