By Elizabeth Farnsworth
Marietta Daily Journal Staff Writer
COBB COUNTY - State schools Superintendent Kathy Cox has tossed out the results from the standardized social studies tests taken by the state's sixth and seventh graders.
The social studies results are not a "trustworthy measure of student achievement," Cox said. She had said earlier in the week that only 20 to 30 percent of state students passed that portion of the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests.
The CRCTs are created by the state Department of Education, but tests are administered by local school districts.
"Simply, the performance appears to be implausibly low, which raised serious questions," Cox said in a news release Wednesday afternoon.
There were no technical problems scoring the tests, she said. But the state needs to change its curriculum - and tests - to better evaluate students' knowledge and skills, she said.
Marietta Schools Superintendent Dr. Emily Lembeck said she had gotten some feedback on the tests from teachers.
"What I'm hearing is not good," she said. "The tests did not accurately measure what the students were to have learned."
Cobb Superintendent Fred Sanderson was out of the county on Thursday and unavailable via phone, but said in an e-mail that he "applauds" Cox and the state Department of Education "for doing the right thing for the students of Georgia."
The district's spokesman, Jay Dillon, said local schools will never see the results of the social studies tests.
"It's essentially as if they didn't happen," he said.
Dillon said Cobb has "serious concerns" about how teaching and curriculum match up with the standards by which students are tested. "Our teachers are pretty confident they were teaching what they thought was an appropriate curriculum. The results clearly showed that wasn't the case," Dillon said.
Marietta's Lembeck agreed.
"When we are given curriculum to teach, that's what we set about doing," she said.
Lembeck said the Department of Education needs to be sure it gives teachers accurate information on what students will be tested on.
The social studies tests are not essential to students' advancing grade levels. Students in third, fifth and eighth grades do have to pass reading and math portions of the CRCT to move to their next grade.
School-by-school results will not be available for several weeks, said leaders in both districts.
But across Cobb, about 20 percent of fifth graders and 29 percent of eighth graders failed the math CRCT, Dillon said. Ten percent of Cobb third graders, 9 percent of fifth graders, and 5 percent of eighth graders failed reading.
Students who fail those tests must successfully re-take the test, or repeat a grade.
efarnsworth@mdjonline.com
Comment on this Story
Posted Comments
This shows clearly the gross incompetence on the State DOE's (including Kathy Cox) ability to design and administer standardized testing. Why try to reinvent the wheel? The state should use ONLY nationally recognized and established forms of testing to measure our students. This will lead to the most valid and reliable measurements with a much larger student population for comparisons. Our Georgia students will be competing with students from all states for future jobs. The CRCTs are not only clearly unreliable, they are now also a national joke.
Yes, dumb them down further. Why not have questions about text messaging, POP Icons, and selfishness. Get rid of anything to do with family, traditional values and American History, and I'm sure they will all pass.
Outstanding comment, Roger. And, "Idiocy" has it right as well. CRCT is just another unintended consequence of No Child Left Behind legislation, which of course has done little to truly improve education. Instead, curriculum is now designed to "teach to the test" -- which means, "Hey kids, here's what you have to learn to pass this test so we can get federal money and not be labeled as needing improvement." Teachers are pressured to impart the material just for the sake of a CRCT test, not to encourage the act of learning, nor invention, analysis, or original thought. Until we realize this, and also Roger's important thoughts, education in GA (and nationally) will continue to spiral downward.
OMG! ROTFLMAO! They will not go to standardized test scores as that may cause jobs to be lost (test writers)and then they may not know exactly what to try and teach since it is so well know that we no longer teach subject matter for common use, but teach to the test. The state wants the control, but obviously with the state rank and results like this they must be hiring (or electing)people not capable of leading a change. Has anyone ever seen a story of the State DOE leaders reviewing what the top ten states are doing? looking for best practices? No, each new regime has to stir the pot because they want to imprint their personal ideas on our children, whether it has been proven effective or not. It's their legacy on the line, not the students
Takes a lot off my mind. My daughter has been worried consistently that she might fail the Social Studies portion of the CRCT because her textbook and her teacher did nothing to prepare her for what happened.
OMG!! I might like actually pass the CRCT because i didn't have to pass the Crct. Kathy Cox knew this was going to happen so why did she even try it. She just did it to make the kids look bad or to get PUBLICITY. Well, at least she took the scores. I think the kids should get a chance to see their scores since they all tried to their best that day. I THINK it should count for something!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
since i came to georgia.. i had all passing grades and why this year did they think it would be funny to make the kids get humiliated and i can tell that kathy cox thought she can try pushing us a little further to see if we can pass and one thing is that she knew that we havent learned half the things that was on th crct social studies and even my social studies teacher was pisssed after what she thought would be funny