At CMS, minority students see gains in standardized tests. But concerns remain
More Black students are passing standardized tests across North Carolina’s biggest school districts, and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools is at the forefront of that change.
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Still, sizable achievement gaps persist among Black and Hispanic students in CMS.
From 2023 though the last school year, the gap between Black and white student proficiency rates narrowed the greatest in Charlotte compared to the four other biggest districts.
That put Charlotte’s performance among Black students well above the others, including Wake County. But Wake County posted one of the highest proficiency rates in the state among all students.
A chasm of 38.7 percentage points still exists between the proficiency of white and Hispanic students in the district. However, the gap narrowed by nearly 4 percentage points during the 2025-26 school year.
“CMS is in the middle of a real academic recovery, but I do believe that recovery and equity are two different things,” CMS board member Liz Monterrey Duvall told The Charlotte Observer Tuesday. “You can progress, but if you’re not progressing at the same rate as other populations, then you are not closing the gap.”
Monterrey Duvall has made it a priority of hers to not only see proficiency improve overall but to minimize discrepancies in achievement between student groups.
The key lies not in giving different support based on demographics, she said, but on finding out what support students need in different subjects and making sure resources are allocated equitably across the county.
“It’s really about looking at what solutions are subject-specific and not demographic-specific,” she said. “Black and Hispanic students are not minority students in CMS … We’re talking about the core of the district, not just margins.”
Monterrey Duvall said progress toward closing gaps still is not “where it needs to be.”
The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction released its yearly school performance grades last week, which are calculated from testing data that includes end-of-grade exam scores and academic growth students made during the previous school year.
CMS saw improvement overall: About 61.1% of CMS students were proficient on this year’s test. That’s a 5.1 percentage point improvement over last year, when 56% of students were proficient. It also surpasses the district’s pre-pandemic proficiency rate of 59.8%.
However, when broken down by race or economic status, for example, gaps emerge between student groups – gaps that have persisted for decades.
About 86% of white students had proficient scores in CMS the last school year, while about 50% of Black students did the same. Roughly 48% of Hispanic students were proficient.
Education experts say achievement gaps are due largely to inequitable access to opportunity and resources.
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In North Carolina, Black and Hispanic students are disproportionately impacted by economic inequality, as Hispanic and Black North Carolinians are statistically more likely to be impacted by poverty than white and Asian North Carolinians.
An Observer analysis of the latest test score data showed a strong link between economic disadvantage and proficiency rates. Generally speaking, schools with larger shares of poor students have lower proficiency rates.
“History tells us that there has never truly been an achievement gap, but an opportunity gap,” Deanna Townsend-Smith, director of the Dudley Flood Center for Educational Equity and Opportunity, told The Charlotte Observer in 2025. “It is an opportunity gap because students have not had the necessary access to highly trained qualified professionals who are in the classroom teaching them each and every day.”
Statistically, schools in North Carolina that have high levels of low-income students and students of color are more likely to have teacher shortages and less experienced teachers than schools that don’t.
CMS leaders say the approach to closing achievement gaps has centered on regular data collection about individual student performance and providing resources and adjustments to each student and school as soon as possible.
Economically disadvantaged students at CMS do better than they do at Wake. And conversely, students who don’t have economic disadvantages do better at Wake than they do at CMS.
“It’s less about the group that the student is in and more about the need that exists,” Beth Thompson, CMS chief strategy and innovation officer, told the Observer Tuesday. “Trusting that when we address the need, then the gaps in student groups will decrease.”
This year’s data suggests that the state is making some baby steps toward closing stubborn gaps, though.
“Seeing the whole ceiling go up, but also the gaps close at the same time – that is the ideal,” said Brenda Berg, CEO and president of education advocacy nonprofit BEST NC. “And, I think that some of these data are indicating that we’re doing that.”
CMS Deputy Superintendent Melissa Balknight said the district has worked to streamline the core content and concepts taught in each CMS school. From there, they can monitor student data throughout the year to identify what they might need more help with.
“So, 95% of the time, you can go from school X to school Y, no matter where they are in the district, and they’re going to all be talking about the same content. It could look different in the classroom, but they’re going to be talking about the same standard,” she said. “Where you’ll see the specially designed instruction will be when they pull the students into small groups based on the data that they have.”
That data monitoring, in addition to master literacy coaches at each CMS campus to address specific student learning needs, has made a big impact, Balknight said.
“In real time, we can diagnose gaps in learning for students and make adjustments along the way,” she said. “We think all those things really speak to the rapid acceleration of closing the gaps in the groups. We acknowledge, however, that we still have significant gaps that we need to close.”
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