While results of Coweta County’s Criterion Reference Competency Test for grades one through eight were released Monday, nearly 1,200 students and school administrators are really looking towards the middle of July as a crucial day.

School spokesperson Dean Jackson said the retest results are the first step in figuring out which grade a child will attend when school starts in August.

“It stands to reason that we will have more students that did not pass the retests, since we had a larger number take the classes and retest this summer,” he said.

Since results won’t be released until mid-July,administrators will have about a two-week time frame to hear appeals from parents and whether the student should advance to the next grade.

The Criterion Reference Competency Test (CRCT) is given to Georgia students in the spring of each school year. The exams test student’s mastery of the state of Georgia’s basic curriculum in the areas of reading, language arts and math in grade one through eight, and science and social studies in grades three through eight. In all, the CRCT covers 36 grades and subject areas.

In a press release this week, Jackson said overall 2008 scores released by the Georgia Department of Education show the Coweta County School System with higher passage rates in 30 out of those 36 areas, scoring the same in one area, and scoring lower than the state in three areas.

The Coweta County School System also improved its own passage rates and average scores in 23 of the 36 areas tested, stayed the same in two areas, and dropped in nine areas.

Since 2003, the state of Georgia and local school systems have been implementing the new Georgia Performance Standards curriculum in reading, English/language arts, math, science and social studies in all grades. The new standards are intended to provide students with a more rigorous curriculum.

In Coweta County, six of the nine areas that saw a decline in passage rates were grades and subjects which had a new CRCT test based on the Georgia Performance Standards for the first time in 2008. Those areas included 3rd, 4th, 5th and 8th grade math, 8th grade social studies and 8th grade science.

Welch Elementary had nearly 40 percent of its students fail the math test, followed by Arbor Springs with a 35 percent failure rate .

The lower passage rates meant that a larger number of students attended elementary and middle school CRCT test prep summer classes and retook the exams on June 20th. Reading scores are used as promotion criteria in grades 3, 5 and 8. Reading passage rates in those three grades improved slightly in 2008.

While the drop in math passage rates is frustrating for students and parents, and a cause for concern, this year’s drop also has to be kept in perspective, said Connie Davis, Coweta County School System’s Testing and School Improvement Director.

“First of all, we have experienced this before in the last few years as the new curriculum and new tests have been introduced,” she said. “With most GPS implementations and new tests there has been a dip in the scores and passage rates, then we also saw a rebound in performance once the areas of weakness were addressed.”

Coweta County’s drop on passage rates for 8th grade math, for example, was 18 points – exactly the same as the statistical drop in passage rates state-wide, said the press release.

Coweta’s overall passage rate was 5 percent higher than the state’s passage rate (68% compared to 63%). Coweta’s 8th grade CRCT science and social studies passage rates were 12% and 11% higher than the state passage rate.

“Our teachers did a good job this year with a difficult situation, just as they have in previous years with implementation of a new, harder curriculum,” said Superintendent Blake Bass.

“We need to remember that the new curriculum being implemented by the state of Georgia is a significant change from the old Quality Core Curriculum. It is moving us toward a standards-based curriculum based more on critical thinking skills,” said Bass. “It isn’t an easy transition. But based on a longitudinal analysis, the scores that dropped this year will go up, as they have in past years. Because of the rigor of this curriculum, the end result will be that our students will be better- prepared and well-rounded.”

School-by-school scores on the CRCT are available at the state Department of Education’s website at www.gadoe.org. Individual student’s CRCT results are available at each child’s school if they have not already received them. During summer months, parents should call ahead if they wish to pick them up, or they can pick them up when the new school year begins on August 6.

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