MARIETTA — Despite running on tighter budgets, the Cobb and Marietta school districts improved their scores in all but a few areas on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests.
In April and May, Georgia students in third through eighth grade are tested in five subjects — reading, English and language arts, math, science and social studies. In 2012’s CRCTs, Cobb’s pass rate dropped in only one testing area, and Marietta’s dropped three.
Students in third, fifth and eighth grades must pass the reading test to advance to the next grade, and fifth- and eighth-graders must also pass the math portion. Students who fail, however, are given opportunities for re-tests and remediation.
In Cobb County Schools, third-graders saw improvements or stayed even in all subject areas. The science pass rate held steady at 81.2 percent of students, and social studies saw the biggest gain with 83.4 percent passing, about 2.7 percentage points more than last year.
Cobb fifth-graders improved in four of the five areas. The percentage of students who passed math dropped by 0.2 points, from 91.1 percent to 90.9 percent. The largest improvement was in social studies, where 80.6 percent of students passed, a 6.4 percentage point increase.
Eighth-graders met or exceeded last year’s results in every subject, improving the most in science, which increased by 5.5 percentage points, from 73.8 percent to 79.3 percent. Reading saw the smallest improvement, with 97.9 percent of students passing, a 0.3 percentage point increase.
“I’m pleased that we’re making progress,” Superintendent Dr. Michael Hinojosa said. “We have a lot of good people, good instructional programs. … there’s a lot of engagement in the classroom.”
Hinojosa didn’t mention the scores during Thursday night’s board meeting, but he said that Board Chair Scott Sweeney had emailed the scores to board members and that they will review them as a whole during the July meeting.
In Marietta, third-graders improved in all areas except science, which saw a 2.7 percentage point drop, and social studies, where there was a 3.2 percentage point drop. Their reading pass rate held steady at 89.5 percent.
Fifth-graders in Marietta saw improvements in four of the five subject areas, dropping in math, where 82.8 percent of students passed, 2 percentage point decrease.
Marietta eighth-graders, like Cobb, saw improvements in every subject area, with the biggest improvement being in math, which saw a 5.2 percentage point increase. The smallest gain was seen in reading, which had a 1.4 percentage point increase.
Dayton Hibbs, Marietta’s assistant superintendent, said district will go through a “very detailed process” of outlining each school’s scores to try and identify where work is needed for next year.
“If we still have some gaps … we look for strategies to increase achievement,” he said.
Hibbs said it’s always disappointing to see decreases like Marietta did in the three testing areas, regardless of how small, but said the district looks forward to the results each year.
“It provides a gauge of where we are with our achievement,” he said.
School-by-school CRCT results will be released no later than July 12, said Matt Cardoza, spokesman for the state education department.
Read more: The Marietta Daily Journal - Cobb city schools mostly improve in CRCTs
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Public schools are commie indoctrination camps.
Losers all the way round.
It would seem, despite all the blogging on this site, the kids manage to somehow get an education and grow and learn desite the ranting to the contrary. Thank you teachers and leaders of Cobb County for your hard work and dedication to our kid's education. It is appreciated!!
I know your work environment is challenging and there are days you wonder why you followed your heart to become a teacher but thank you for all you do!!!
the far superior balanced calendar were in place?!
Give peace a chance and give credit to teachers for improvement which seemingly occurs regardless of the calendar.
This horribly expensive joke of a test needs to be scrapped.
You are wrong.
While the results may be scaled and the test has its issues, it is insult to our children and their teachers to tell them all their worry and stressing over passing the test is wasted - hey kids, this test doesn't really measure your retention of the past year...just Christmas tree it.
Apparently I need to be further educated on this subject so I ask you, "what would you use to replace this test as a measure of teacher ability and student achievement?" It is easy to throw stones at something but coming up with real solutions is where people seem to come up short.
Twenty years ago kids were pushed through the system with little accountability of their learning anything. Teachers that were unable to teach just floated their way to tenure. I know that still happens from time to time but this test has brought some level of accountability to the system that was seriously lacking. While the test is far from perfect, I have yet to see anything that has sucessfuly replaced standardized testing as a measure of achievement and accountability.
Your ideas are more than welcome here...if they go beyond telling people to grow up and "throw out the test."
A test has 40 questions, all multiple choice. Statistically, the kid has a 1 in 4 chance of getting a perfect paper if he randomly selects answers. He has a 2 in 4 chance of getting a 50% through random selection.
The bigger issue is the fact that we're celebrating 50% He wouldn't pass the class with 50%. A future surgeon, pilot or cash register operator has to be right greater than 50% of the time.
Studies suggest, over the summer he'll lose up to 30% of what he's learned (50%) regardless of which calendar the school follows.
If you're this determined to keep the test, why not require 70% to meet, 80% to exceed?
It's not that I am a supporter of the test as much as no one has yet to come up with a better solution for accountability or achievement. Do we base it simply on the child's grades? I hope not, because those are very easily adjusted in the classroom. If we don't utilize a standardized test, what do we use to measure student retention/performance or a teacher's effectiveness in the classroom?
I do understand your arguement for raising the standard over 50% and that seems more than reasonable but (based on JDTBQ's arguement) the test is such garbage, there is little value in raising the standard. Using your statistical arguement, couldn't we just as well be served by giving the children 6 or 8 answers to choose from rather than 4 - cook the books with the probabilities, if you will. At the end of the day, the kids still need to learn and this test is not measuring their ability to Christmas tree nearly as much as it meaures what they have learned over the year.
First off, an evaluation of the content of the test wouldn't hurt, as most of us never see the darn things. We've left it all in the hands of the GaDOE. The same GaDOE under whose leadership has consistently kept Georgia in the bottom five nation-wide. (Yes, I'm aware of the socio-economic factors, SAT/ACT issues, and everything else that contributes to that ranking).
Second, I would propose throwing out the field questions, and doing a straight scoring (70% meet, 80-85% exceeds). If Georgia won't tell us the weighted scaling, and the number of field questions missed, the results don't tell us much.
A friend has a daughter who missed 21 out of 40 and still met the expected score needed for grade promotion. Either her christmas tree was really jazzy, she missed too many field questions, or she just missed all the minor questions. Whichever it was, it gives her parents and her teachers absolutely nothing valid to evaluate her performance.
I guess we'll agree to disagree on some of this, but I do appreciate the debate.