100% of Our Schools Met Growth in the State ABC's!
85% 4-Year Cohort Graduation Rate

When the State Board of Education released ABC state testing results earlier this year, 100% of the schools in our district met growth and earned the designation as a School of Distinction for the 2010-2011 school year!  Additionally, Tharrington and Jones Schools met high growth. Mount Airy High School has twice been ranked in the top 3% of high schools in America.  Growth is the most important indicator of all of the measures in the state and federal testing programs.  In simple terms, expected growth is a year's worth of learning for a year's worth of teaching.  While we celebrate this success, we can always do even better.  We are committed to providing rigorous programs that enable all students to be successful after they graduate from Mount Airy City Schools! Congratulations to our students and staff!
 
As one piece of evidence of our commitment to excellence, Mount Airy High School recently received the distinguished honor of being named a National Blue Ribbon School for 2011. It is the only high school in North Carolina to receive this award for 2011. Since 1982, the US Department of Education has honored America's most successful public and private elementary, middle, and high schools through the Blue Ribbon Schools Program (BRS).
 
We also heard good news about graduation rates.  Mount Airy City Schools’ graduation rate is among the top 15 districts of North Carolina’s 115 school districts.  According to a report issued by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, 85% of Mount Airy High School students earned a diploma in the traditional four-year time frame.  This is significantly higher than the state average of 77.9%.

These pieces of data are indicators that show our district is on the right track.  We have hard working teachers and staff who know how to make it happen! 

This report card includes important information about school and student performance, class sizes, attendance, school safety, school facilities, instructional resources, and teacher quality. It includes how our schools measured against federal Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) targets and the number of suspensions and expulsions in our schools. Report card data are available for each of our schools, our school district, and for the state’s education system as a whole and it reflects the 2010-2011 school year.

With the focus across the state and nation being on student performance, our schools must continually focus on ways to close achievement gaps and bring every student to proficiency. Our teachers and administrators are focusing on data-driven instruction and on prescribing interventions to help the individual student.  The continued increase in target proficiency standards and the increasing number of student impacted by the economy, made achieving these goals even more difficult. Jones School met 21 out of 23 target goals (or 91.3%), while Mount Airy Middle met 19 out of 21 goals (or 90.5%). Mount Airy High School met 13 out of the 13 target goals (or 100%) at their school. 
 
The report cards are available on the Report Card website (www.ncreportcards.org). Each of our schools’ full report cards can be viewed at this Website, or read the two-page summary, called the Report Card Snapshot, that can be found there as well.

In Mount Airy, we want parents to be more informed about the progress of each of our schools and to be more involved on a regular basis. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to share this report card with you and thank you for supporting our efforts to provide your child with a high-quality education. We feel confident that student engagement and caring relationships are key factors to student success. 

Continue to track our progress on Twitter at MACSchools or on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/MACSchools.
 
Dr. Chuck Morris, Superintendent