In the final year of Georgia’s CRCT testing, City Schools of Decatur students seem to have again posted average scores above 90% in all 5 disciplines, inline with the strong scores put up by the city school system last year.  (We had to pull together the data above from various sources. I promise you, it was fun. Click it to enlarge)

According to the AJC, in DeKalb…

…86 percent of third graders met or exceeded the reading standard, as did 89 percent of fifth graders and 91 percent of eighth graders. The biggest change from the prior year was in fifth grade, where there was a 2.8 percentage point increase in the number of students passing.

It was a different story in math, where there was more change in the key grades: the third grade pass rate rose by 2.9 percentage points, but fifth grade dropped 2.8 points and eighth was down 3.9 points. The actual math pass rates were low compared to reading, where the percent of students who met or exceeded the standards ranged from the high 80s to the low 90s. The pass rate in math was 68 percent for third graders, 76 percent for fifth graders and 65 percent for eighth graders.

The AJC has summaries for all Atlanta metro counties HERE.

CRCT is being retired this year and replaced with “Georgia Milestones”, reportedly a more demanding test that will span all grades 3-12, instead of the current system where 3rd-8th graders take CRCT and 9th-12th graders take EOCT.

CSD sent out this release yesterday…

Decatur, GA (2011)- City Schools of Decatur is proud to announce highlights from some of the state-required assessments during the 2010-2011 school year. Students’ achievements certainly stem from their hard work and meaningful family involvement in their education. In addition, a systemic teacher quality initiative has been intentionally implemented over the last two years that seems to correlate to increased student achievement. This initiative has included an implementation of a rigorous teacher evaluation system called CLASS: CLassroom Analysis of State Standards.

Reading scores on the CRCT have rated among the highest in Georgia. Renfroe Middle School had the highest mean CRCT score in the state of Georgia in 8th grade, the second highest in 7th grade, and the 3rd highest in 6th grade.

Science scores were particularly high at three levels: 8th graders had the second highest mean score in the state while 3rd graders and 6th graders had the third highest mean scores in the state of Georgia. In addition, 99% of students at Decatur High School passed the science portion of the Georgia High School Graduation Test.

Math has been an area of focus for City Schools of Decatur during the 2010-2011 school year. Results were strong at Decatur High School where 78% of Math II students passed the End of Course Test in 2010-2011 compared to 60% in 2009-2010.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Georgia Department of Education released the 2010 CRCT scores on June 23rd.  Here’s how Decatur’s students fared overall and compared to the other 281 public school districts in the state of Georgia, according to the AJC database.

Results are ordered: Subject, Percentage Passed (Statewide Rank)

• First Grade – Reading 96.6% (42nd), English 88.6% (17th), Math 91.4% (9th)
• Second Grade – Reading 92.5% (14th), English 88.5% (37th), Math 89.4% (30th)
• Third Grade – Reading 91.6% (29th), English 87.4% (64th), Math 81.1% (38th), Science 85.8% (26th), Social Studies 84.7% (29th)
• Fourth Grade – Reading 94.3% (10th), English 90.3% 53rd), Math 82.4% (42nd), Science 87.2% (64th), Social Studies 82.8% (30th)
• Fifth Grade – Reading 91.4% (14th), English 92.5% (7th), Math 85.6% (33rd), Science 81.3% (10th), Social Studies 86.6% (11th)
• Sixth Grade – Reading 91.5% (20th), English 92.6% (25th), Math 84.7% (25th), Science 81.5% (24th), Social Studies 80.3% (17th)
• Seventh Grade – Reading 92.5% (30th), English 93.1% (6th), Math 90.2% (35th), Science 81.6% (35th), Social Studies 84.3% (28th)
• Eighth Grade – Reading 96.7% (30th), English 96.2% (77th), Math 86.3% (23rd), Science 89.6% (14th), Social Studies 79.1% (34th)

Hat-tip to The DNO, who notes that in many areas CSD actually ranked even higher when looking at “median scale score” in the raw data, instead of just the percentage of students who passed.  (According to the DNO, using this metric of evalution all Decatur grade levels ranked among the top 10 districts statewide in Reading.) This is due to the fact that in many areas and grades, a larger number of CSD students not only “met” but “exceeded” state standards, thereby bumping the median score above districts with more students who just met the standards.

I’m sure many of you school-junkies have been closely following Georgia’s ongoing CRCT “cheating scandal”, where many panicked administrators in certain schools systems across the state made many students instantly and suspiciously brilliant with just an eraser and a pencil.

Just this week the AJC released the list of “severe” schools, those where 25% or more of classrooms had a significant number of erasures from wrong to right answers on the CRCT tests.  More than half of the schools labeled “severe” were within the Atlanta Public School system.  Play them off Keyboard Cat!

Closer to home, according to the AJC’s database, none of the City of Decatur’s schools registered above the “clear” category (“0%-5.4% of classrooms in this school flagged with wrong-to-right changes that fell above the state average”), in the CRCT investigation.

Here’s the percentage of classes flagged by CSD school…

• Clairemont Elementary: 0%
• Oakhurst Elementary: 3.7%
• Winnona Park Elementary: 0%
• Glennwood Academy: 5.3%
• Renfroe Middle School: 4.2%

Renfroe’s Science Department Chair, Kris Webb, points out that Renfroe’s 8th grade and Oakhurst’s 2nd grade each won Superintendent’s Distinguished Achievement Awards for CRCT scores this past year.

Oakhurst’s second grade class won for ranking 8th out of all Georgia schools in % of students that exceeded the standard in Reading (85.9%).

Renfroe’s eight grade class won for ranking 9th out of all Georgia schools in % of students that exceeded the standard in Science  (41.2%)

Webb gives a bit more detail on Renfroe’s achievement…

I teach 8th grade science and we received an achievement award for being in the top 10 schools in the state for 8th grade science CRCT scores in the “exceed” category. 48% of our students met the standards and 41% of our 8th grade science students exceeded the standards. Only 10% of our students did not meet the standards. These results includes our students with disabilities. I am so proud of all the students!

I want the community to know that Renfroe teachers are committed to high achievement and we try extremely hard to make our classes interactive, engaging, memorable and standards-based. 8th grade science is a lab-based class and you won’t see our students bored, sitting at their desks, or constantly reading a textbook. They are up out of their seats doing experiments and activities constantly…CSD is great!

Nice work!