Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools hits a post-pandemic first in new NC testing data
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools has surpassed its pre-pandemic performance on state tests for the first time, according to state data released Wednesday.
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The state’s Department of Public Instruction on Wednesday released school performance grades, which are calculated from testing data that includes end-of-grade exam scores and academic growth students made during the previous school year.
This year, state education officials released data for the 2025-26 school year, the fifth post-pandemic academic year.
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%.
A student is considered “proficient” if they demonstrate “sufficient understanding” of grade-level knowledge and skills, according to the state. That requires a score of three out of five or higher on end-of-grade exams. Students are considered “college and career ready” if they score a four or five.
CMS surpassed the state average for the second year in a row.
The state had an average proficiency rate of 59.2%. It’s the highest state proficiency rate of the last three years and sits 4.2 percentage points above last year’s average.
Both the state and CMS reached their highest high school graduation rate on record during the 2025-26 school year, at 88.8% and 87.9% respectively.
“These academic achievement results are a testament to the incredible work happening across North Carolina’s public schools,” North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction Maurice “Mo” Green said in a news release. “I look forward to continued progress as we aim to achieve educational excellence for all North Carolina public school students and become the best public education system in the nation.”
CMS Superintendent Crystal Hill didn’t say much about the district’s results ahead of their release Wednesday, though she told reporters Aug. 18 that the district would have “a lot of excellent news to share,” regarding this year’s results.
Hill spoke at a NCDPI news conference Wednesday morning about what led to the district’s results.
“Our success is not accidental,” she said. “What we discovered is we must embed accountability into our daily routines.”
Hill cited a few strategies: regularly tracking performance data, teacher collaboration and classroom support from instructional specialists.
CMS parents have been pushing for the district to scale back its use of an online performance tracking tool called iReady in recent months, calling for less screen time in elementary school. Hill said data monitoring is key to the district’s momentum but that she doesn’t believe that scaling back iReady would disrupt its progress.
“iReady gives us a temperature check at the beginning of the year, the middle of the year and the end of the year to see how students are performing,” Hill told The Charlotte Observer Wednesday afternoon. “But I certainly would not characterize anything that we’re doing in our district reliant only on one tool or one measure.”
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The district’s improvement comes despite widespread technical problems when the test was administered in May.
Problems persisted for two days that stopped some CMS students from finishing end-of-grade state testing due to “platform and/or server disruptions,” CMS told teachers. Technical glitches caused screens to freeze or abruptly kick students out of the system.
North Carolina state tests have been administered entirely online since the 2022-23 school year.
CMS Deputy Superintendent Melissa Balknight said Wednesday’s data were cause for celebration.
“Today’s results give us many reasons to be encouraged, and they reinforce our confidence in the work happening every day,” she told reporters Wednesday.
The results come on the heels of Hill’s reinstatement as CMS superintendent following a nearly two-month-long investigation this summer. She was placed on paid leave while the CMS school board investigated matters involving “administrative and operational oversight.” The board voted last week to release a report detailing the investigation’s findings by the end of September.
Find school performance grades for North Carolina schools in the graph below.
The state issues a letter grade to each school on an A through F scale, and while 80% of the grade is based purely on test scores, about 20% of the calculation is based on students’ year-over-year improvement.
This year, around 44% of CMS campuses, or 82 schools, exceeded their growth targets. In total, 15% of schools – or 28 campuses – did not meet their growth goals.
Last year, CMS schools saw even more dramatic growth. Around 61% of CMS campuses, or 113 schools, exceeded their growth targets in the 2024-25 school year.
About 44% of CMS schools received A or B performance grades, an increase of 5 percentage points over the 2024-25 school year. Thirty-one CMS campuses received an A, and 51 received a B.
The percentage of schools receiving D or F grades decreased by around 9 percentage points, from 29% after the 2024-25 school year to 20% after the 2025-26 school year
Last fall, CMS leaders set the goal of reducing the number of F-rated schools in the district from six to zero. This year’s data shows CMS now has three F-rated schools.
The state also creates a list of “low-performing” schools each year – schools that earn a D or an F and do not exceed growth targets. CMS now has 28 schools on the low-performing list, according to Wednesday’s data – down from 32 last year.
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This story was originally published September 2, 2026 at 10:27 AM.
