NC student scores improve, but more schools low-performing

North Carolina's education department has released student test scores and school performance grades for the past school year. They show hundreds of additional public schools are now labeled as low-performing compared to the last time the designation was calculated in 2019. That's based on passing rates on exams and exceeding growth expectations on those tests. But other data from the Department of Public Instruction also released Thursday showed student scores improved overall in the 2021-22 school year compared to the year before, which was marked by COVID-19 instructional restrictions. An earlier DPI analysis found significant learning losses during the pandemic.