Harvard, Stanford scorecard finds Alamance-Burlington students far behind peers
ABSS students in grades 3-8 are more than a grade behind in reading and math, with math nearly two grades below 2019 levels.
Alamance-Burlington students in grades 3 through 8 are more than a full grade level behind the national average in reading and math, and the new Harvard and Stanford Education Scorecard placed the district near the bottom of more than 10,000 U.S. school systems. The sharpest gap is in math, where ABSS is nearly two full grade levels behind its 2019 national benchmark, while reading is more than a full grade behind.
The scorecard uses state test results for roughly 35 million students across grades 3 through 8, tracks districts on a common national scale and uses data through the 2024-25 school year. ABSS students slipped between 2022 and 2025, leaving them more than a full grade behind their pre-pandemic achievement in both core subjects.
North Carolina’s statewide results were better than ABSS’s showing but still uneven. The state ranked 9th out of 38 in math growth and 22nd out of 35 in reading growth between 2022 and 2025, yet reading remained about 0.69 grade equivalents below 2019 levels. Chronic absenteeism fell from more than 32 percent in 2022 to about 25 percent in 2025, but it was still almost 10 percentage points above pre-pandemic levels. Alamance-Burlington was listed among districts still lagging behind 2019 levels.
Alamance-Burlington serves 22,661 students in 38 schools and reports a student-teacher ratio of 16.37. Alamance-Burlington Schools is headquartered at 1712 Vaughn Road in Burlington, and Superintendent Aaron Fleming, sworn in on Sept. 18, 2024, said the system needs renovated facilities and a way to restore positions such as assistant principals, media coordinators, counselors and mental-health support.
ABSS spent $26 million cleaning up mold in nearly all school buildings, after a 2023 fight over $9 million more for remediation and repeated budget clashes with Alamance County commissioners. The district was also designated low performing for the 2024-25 school year, the first time it has received that label under the current state grading system.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
