Stanly County School Board approves summer learning program to help students boost end-of-grade exams

Published 8:55 am Friday, March 4, 2022

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The Stanly County Board of Education approved the resumption of the district’s summer learning program during its Tuesday meeting.

The program will be specifically offered to students who passed a course but then struggled to meet proficiency on the corresponding End of Grade Test (EOG) or End of Course Test (EOC), said Tim Hatley, the district’s director of testing and accountability.

The summer learning program for the traditional schools will be four-hour instructional days running June 13-15, with a retest day on June 16. For the early college schools, the program would be four hours and run May 25- 27, with the retest May 31.

The program would cover third grade math, fourth to eighth grade reading and math, fifth and eighth grade science and all four of the high school EOCs (Math 1, Math 3, Biology and English II).

“It’s intended to be an intensive remediation period,” said Dr. Amy Blake-Lewis, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction. “So for example, if a student is testing fifth or eighth grade science, it’s an intensive three days of really focusing just on that content, specifically to vocabulary and maybe processes that need to be shored up for those students.”

The summer learning program was offered during the 2018-2019 school year and the board approved of the program for the following school year before Covid hit. The district did not pursue the program last year “as we were more interested in just trying to get students tested at the end of the year,” Hatley said.

Of the 901 students who participated in the program during the 2018-2019 school year, 281, or 31 percent, attained a proficiency score after retaking their exam.

“We had a huge turnaround,” Hatley said.

About Chris Miller

Chris Miller has been with the SNAP since January 2019. He is a graduate of NC State and received his Master's in Journalism from the University of Maryland. He previously wrote for the Capital News Service in Annapolis, where many of his stories on immigration and culture were published in national papers via the AP wire.

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