In Savannah, at the annual GSBA summer conference we had the opportunity to hear from Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox. There was a lot of anticipation in the room for what she would say based on a lot of media reports that had been in the news lately. I have to say that I was really impressed with the fact that Katy Cox did not shy away from the “elephant in the room” issues. She took on directly the critics of this years CRCT results and her idea to push back the start time of Georgia schools.
Superintendent Cox first made the point (rightly so) that success is not always defined by higher scores. In Georgia we are in the process of completely overhauling our K12 curriculum and there are going to be some issues along the way. The two areas that received the most criticism this year were 8th grade social studies and math. The social studies problems were multi-fa-citied and it looks like there was a disconnect between what was taught and what was written into the test. Results from around the state all indicated a systemic problem and the DOE through out the social studies results. They are working to make it right and I am confident that next year this problem will be corrected.
There were a number of factors that went into the issues with the 8th grade math scores. The first issue is that this was the first year that the 8th grade teachers were teaching the new GPS curriculum. Superintendent Cox made sure to point out that there has always been a “drop” in scores in which we have converted from the old QCC based curriculum to the new GPS curriculum. The following year the GPS—->GPS scores have improved dramatically. If this pattern holds true then we would expect to see improvement with 8th grade math scores next year.
There have been many benefits to the increased rigor and increased cut scores that have been written in to the CRCT tests. Statewide when two years of GPS have been taught the gap between minority students and white students has significantly narrowed. Georgia has been recognized nationally for what we are doing to strengthen our curriculum and the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) says that higher level math is needed for every child.
Finally if you look at 8th grade math CRCT results and the over 60% pass rate that we saw statewide there is some good news in those raw numbers. For the past few years at the high school level the pass rate on the Algebra I and Geometry End of Course Tests (EOCT) has been in the 60% range. The new 8th grade GPS curriculum pushes those subject areas down to middle school as an integrated program. It should not be surprising that we would see similar pass rates when this material is taught in the middle school. Algebra I and Geometry according to Superintendent Cox are two of the primary reasons students fail and ultimately drop out of high school. By attacking this problem earlier we should be able to reduce the impact of these courses on our dropout rate and better prepare our students for high school and post secondary education.
No one wants to see their student “fail” but I believe we are headed in the right direction in Georgia and I would just encourage everyone to be patient and allow these changes to really take hold before we render out decision on how successful we have been.
Filed under: Bartow County, Education, Leadership, Politics, Republican
