Ushering in the new school year, the Buncombe County Board of Education opened its Sept. 4 meeting with highlights from last year’s state assessment.
The cohort graduation rate for the class of 2025 was 91.4% — the second-highest cohort graduation rate in the history of the school system, grazing 2024’s record-setting rate by one-tenth of a percentage point. This was a key takeaway for Buncombe County Schools (BSC) Superintendent Rob Jackson, especially in the wake of Tropical Storm Helene, which led to school closures that extended for nearly a month.
“State assessments are a single data point for how students and schools are doing but do not measure all that a student or a school accomplished in a school year,” Jackson noted. “That said, they are an important data point.”…