School Performance Grade Changes
House Bill 773 revises North Carolina’s school accountability framework by repealing the current school performance score and grade statutes and replacing them with a new scoring system. The bill directs the State Board of Education to calculate school performance scores on a 100-point scale using a broader set of measures for elementary, middle, and high schools, including proficiency, growth, English language proficiency, graduation rates, career and college readiness indicators, and industry credentials. It also requires the State Board to assign letter grades A through F based on specified score thresholds and prohibits adding modifiers such as pluses or minuses.
The bill further requires separate performance scores and grades for student subgroups, including economically disadvantaged students, major racial and ethnic groups, students with disabilities, and English learners, if the subgroup meets the minimum size threshold. It also expands report card requirements so that school report cards prominently display growth designations, subgroup results, reading and math scores for K-8 schools, and career/college readiness measures for high schools, with user-friendly online access and multi-year comparisons. The bill states that the new system is intended to satisfy federal ESSA requirements for meaningful school differentiation.
The bill would substantially amend Chapter 115C and related statutes governing school accountability, report cards, low-performing school identification, principal intervention rules, charter schools, laboratory schools, and several specialized education programs. It repeals existing school performance provisions and replaces them with new sections that redefine how school performance scores and grades are calculated, reported, and used in state accountability and federal compliance. The changes would apply beginning with data from the 2025-2026 school year and would affect traditional public schools, charter schools, laboratory schools, and other state-supervised schools, as well as the parents, principals, and school systems subject to the reporting and intervention rules tied to performance grades.
The available voting history suggests strong support for the bill in the House, with passage on second reading by a vote of 105-2. No committee transcript is available, so there is no recorded floor or committee debate in the provided materials. Based on the bill’s broad restructuring of accountability metrics and the large favorable vote, the general sentiment appears to be largely positive or at least broadly acceptable among House members.
The main points of potential contention are the bill’s redesign of school accountability and the consequences that flow from performance grades. Supporters are likely to favor the broader set of measures, subgroup reporting, and more prominent display of growth and readiness indicators as a more complete picture of school performance. Possible concerns may come from those who worry about the complexity of the new formula, the continued reliance on letter grades, the impact on schools labeled low-performing, and the use of subgroup grades and report card transparency to trigger public scrutiny or administrative consequences for schools and principals. The 105-2 vote indicates that any opposition was limited, but the bill’s accountability and intervention provisions are the most likely sources of disagreement.