West Virginia schools and districts are continuing to show improvements in English language arts and mathematics according to the 2024-2025 West Virginia Balanced Scorecard results.
“We most definitely are trending in a in a positive direction,” state Superintendent Michele Blatt said on MetroNews Talkline.
According to the state’s 2024-2025 school year data, 86% of districts improved on English language arts performance.
And 83% improved on math performance.
Attendance also continues to trend in a positive direction, with 76% of districts improving over last year, resulting in a statewide chronic absenteeism rate of 22.8%.
“We are slowly decreasing that amount and we are down this year to 22.8% of our students. It’s a little less than a one percentage drop from the previous year,” Blatt said.
“But I believe if you look at the trend over the past three years, we’re down — I believe it’s six to nine percentage points total. So a lot of the focus that our counties and our schools are investing on the importance of being present and being in the classroom is paying off.”
Each public school and district receives a scorecard that measures progress across multiple indicators, including academic achievement, academic progress and student success indicators such as chronic absenteeism and post-secondary outcomes.
The Balanced Scorecard provides annual updates to families, communities and stakeholders on district and school performance.
Last year, more than 98% of West Virginia’s public school students took the required assessments.
Here is how the testing assessment works: An overall assessment score of less than 50% is considered to not meet the academic standard; a score between 50% and 65% partially meets standard; a score of 65% to 80% meets standard; and above 80% exceeds standard.
Overall, the state’s English language arts performance is 58.04 percent.
Math performance is 53.32%.
Both scores indicate only partially meeting the standard, but both are improvements from the prior year’s scores, which were 56.11% in ELA and 50.86% in math.