The Georgia CRCT Mess

Most everyone has heard the news that thousands of Georgia’s eighth grade public school students (about 40 % of the total number) failed the mathematics portion of the Georgia’s Criterion Referenced Competency Tests for the eighth grade level.  Additionally, thousands more sixth and seventh grade students failed the social studies portion of their respective CRCT exams. 

In the latter case, the situation was so bad that Kathy Cox, Georgia State School Superintendent, voided all the social studies tests results!  Her reasoning was that for so many sixth and seventh graders to have failed demonstrated the weakness of the curriculum and the invalidity of the tests.

As for the math scores, Cox allowed those to stand stating that the curriculum taught in Georgia was performance-based, rigorous, and research-supported.

Now, I am not a mathematics expert, but I do have some concerns about how we are teaching math in this state.

First, it appears to me that we are moving more and more complicated mathematics concepts and skills downward in the curriculum to younger and younger students.   I question as to whether or not the brains of these youngsters are physiologically developed to the extent that they can deal with these complicated and abstract ideas.

Second, many of the current mathematics textbook series in use in Georgia are NOT correlated with the Georgia Performance Standards in Mathematics.

Lastly, there are many good math teachers who are not sold on the mass customization teaching model that the state is expecting teachers to use in instructing students in mathematics in our schools.

With respect to the social studies issue in the sixth and seventh grade, the answer is as simple as the “nose on my face.”  Over the past decade, elementary teachers have been brainwashed to make sure that students in grades K-5 were taught reading/language arts and math.  If any subject suffered or was left out, it was social studies.

What do you expect, Kathy?!?

This morning, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that the Georgia Department of Education does not keep track of the students who fail the eighth grade CRCT.  The Department doesn’t know how many of these are retained in the eighth grade, how many go on to high school (via the wimp appeals process), or how many drop-out.

This is indicative of the great weakness of the Georgia Department of Education and why Georgia will never “lead the nation in improving student achievement.”  Every time we confront a really hard issue, Superintendent Cox and her reformist staff cry, “local control, local control.”

Public education in the 21^st Century should be a state task.  The challenge of bringing our students into meaningful competition with the rest of the technologically developed world requires much strength and effort.  But I don’t see anyone with the gonads to grasp the problem!