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Guilford County Schools received some flak last year when the release of 2007 SAT scores showed a drop in district performance from the previous year. At the time, former Superintendent Terry Grier promised to beef up SAT preparation efforts.

Well, we'll find out how successful those efforts were, if they happened, on Tuesday when the College Board releases 2008 results.

Find here just-released 2008 ACT scores. I have requested district-level data and will post when I get it.

Update: Guilford County Schools does not have local statistics because it stopped purchasing the data several years ago.

A report released this week by the Center on Education Policy shows that many states have chosen to postpone raising the bar on NCLB profiency standards, resulting in dramatically higher—and potentially unreachable—achievement goals beginning with the 2008-09 schools year. Other states, including North Carolina, set incremental goals in an attempt to make steady progress toward the 100 percent profiency targets.

Read the full report here.

Taking incremental steps is not without its own challenges. North Carolina students have struggled in the past to meet the stricter standards the state has set. The Department of Public Instruction is still waiting to hear back from federal officials on a request to not count the reading scores for grades three through eight for Adequate Yearly Progress sanction purposes. You can read the state's rationale in the attached letter (page 3 of the letter).

I talked to Gongshu Zhang, GCS's chief accountability officer, about this a month ago, and he said that he expected fewer schools will make AYP if the federal government doesn't allow the exemption. Zhang, who used to work for DPI, said that the department did not properly prepare educators for the increase in standards (which occur every three years) and so teachers have been discouraged when students perform poorly on the exams. Zhang said he thinks the state should have piloted the increased standards before implementing them state-wide.

Zhang said the percentage point increases in targets, for example, increasing from 76.7 percent in reading to 84.4 percent, appears arbitrary. He suggested increasing by a smaller percentage.

"You must give us solid rationale as to why this amount is scientifically based," he said.

That of course begs the question, how do you meet the federal goal of 100 percent by 2014?

Eigth-graders in North Carolina scored on par with their peers across the country on the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress, whose results were released Thursday. Students' writing scores decreased when compared with results from 2002, the last time the national test was given.

However, 87 percent of students scored at the basic level or above on the writing test. About 4,000 students at 150 N.C. schools participated. You can find the full state press release here.

NAEP is often referred to as "The Nation's Report Card" because it is the only common assessment used by all states. Average writing scores increased from 2002 to 2007 for 19 of the 39 states and jurisdictions that participated in the writing assessment in both years.

North Carolina eighth-graders averaged a scale score of 153 in 2007, compared to a national average of 154. North Carolina's average scale score was 150 in 1998; in 2002, the score was 157, one of the highest in the nation at the time.

In general, North Carolina students performing at the 50th percentile or below maintained their performance level from 2002 to 2007, while students at the 75th or 90th percentile lost ground. Students at the 50th percentile decreased four points during this period, but this change was not statistically significant, according to the NAEP report.

State Superintendent June Atkinson expressed concern about the slip among top-performing students in a brief press conference today.

"This points out how we have to pay more attention to how we are serving our students who are high achievers," she said.

Atkinson said the state board is requesting more state funding for gifted students. Halifax, Bertie, Hertford and Richmond counties are also getting addtional help.

Atkinson added that literary coaches are working with 200 schools in the state and DPI is working with the university system to make sure they graduate teachers who can adequately teach writing processes. Classroom writing assignmens also need to be creative and interesting, Atkinson said.