BRUNSWICK COUNTY — During the 2025-2026 school year, the majority of Brunswick County schools have students performing at or above grade-level average, with kindergarten through third grade beating the state average.
An instruction assessment update was presented to the Brunswick County Board of Education on Monday, July 20, by the Executive Director of Professional Development and Elementary Education Jen Damin and Director of Secondary Instruction Tiffany George.
Two programs are used to track student academic progress and determine if they are meeting grade level expectations. One is IReady — an online education program used to teach math as well as act as a diagnostic tool. It is used as a routine part of the math curriculum by assisting in teaching students math units and then providing benchmark testing.
Additionally students are tested three times a year using DIBELS, a state-wide reading and literacy benchmark. Students take three reading benchmarks per year to monitor progress.
Brunswick County grades all ended the year with DIBELS scores higher than the state average. The district also saw more growth with eight out of 10 elementary schools hitting the growth benchmark, as opposed to last year’s six.
Brunswick County K-3 had seen a decrease in scores in recent years, with 75% of students hitting at or above benchmark level in 2022-2023, 74% in 2023-2024, and falling to 70% in 2024-2025. During the most recent academic year, the district was able to bring the percentage of students performing at or above benchmark level back to 74%; however the goal is to hit 80%.
First-grade scored 6% over the state average score, with 71% of students performing at or above benchmark. Second-grade scored 5% above the state average, with 72% of students meeting or exceeding grade level expectations and third-grade was 2% above the average state score at 66% of students being at or above the benchmark.
Most notably, kindergarten was the only grade that began the year under-performing in comparison to the state. Beginning of the year benchmark testing had 24% of Brunswick County kindergartens performing at or above benchmark as opposed to the state average of 33%. By the end of the school year Brunswick County kindergarteners were able to exceed the state average benchmark by 8%, with 80% of students meeting or exceeding benchmark.
Two out of 10 elementary schools hit the 80% DIBELS end-of-year goal. Waccamaw Elementary came in at 80% and Town Creek Elementary was at 81%.
The district also saw promising mathematics benchmarks; in IReady all elementary and middle schools saw high growth, meaning students improved at a significant rate from the start of the school year. Brunswick County Schools have been using IReady since the 2024-2025 school year.
At the start of the school year, only 21% of K-8 students were at or above grade level performance on IReady. By the end of the year, the number rose to 59%.
“We got a lot of strong impact,” George said. “Our teachers are feeling more comfortable with this curriculum and therefore they are instructing at a high level and following it nicely.”
Aside from promising benchmark scores, the district also saw high rates of student growth — highlighting improvements from beginning of the year testing to the end.
Seven out of 10 Brunswick County elementary schools fell into both the high growth and high performing for the end-of-year diagnostic. Additionally, all middle schools hit the high growth mark with five out of six schools achieving both high growth and high performance for the second year in a row.
“We want to celebrate what our teachers are doing, also our instructional coaches for support, our interventionists, and then our district instructional support team,” Damin said during the presentation. “And then the principals, the principals are in classrooms and they are ensuring that our students are receiving these instructions.”
All in all, Brunswick County schools saw continued benchmarks improvements with Damin and George noting that even schools, which had lower performance rates than the previous year, hit the high growth mark.
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