Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools released the annual CMS School Progress Reports for families. These reports, created at the request of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, are intended to help keep parents informed about their children’s schools.
The four-page reports provide data from the 2008-2009 school year, and were prepared for every school that was open last year. Schools that opened for the 2009-2010 school year will have their first CMS School Progress Report next year.
The reports, compiled by the district’s Office of Accountability, provide a variety of information about each school. The first page has a letter from the school principal and demographic data about the school. The second page provides data about the school, including test scores, teacher education and experience, safety-audit results and survey data showing how parents and students perceive the school.
“We want to provide a three-dimensional picture of our schools to parents,” said Dr. Peter C. Gorman, superintendent of CMS. “Test results are certainly an important measure – but they don’t provide a complete picture of an individual school. So we include measures such as school safety, staff education and other data, as well as test scores.”
The information chosen for inclusion in the CMS School Progress Reports also aligns with the district’s strategic goals.
“We have identified what is most important to us as a district,” said Robert Avossa, the district’s chief accountability officer. “These reports will help us see the needs and particular characteristics of each school.”
CMS School Progress Reports are released each year in the fall. Spanish translations of the reports are made available to schools with large populations of Spanish-speaking students. To save money and resources, the reports this year have been posted online, rather than printed and sent home with students.
To help parents better understand how CMS measures student progress, the reports include descriptions of the accountability measures used by CMS, including Adequate Yearly Progress as defined by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. For high schools, information about college testing and advanced courses is also included.
To find a CMS School Progress Report for a particular school, click here.