VALDOSTA — As summer draws to a close the local school systems are reviewing the summer Criterion Referenced Competency Test (CRCT) results and getting ready to implement new programs to boost future scores.
Before summer remediation began, the Valdosta City School System received the end of year scores and while they saw gains within the reading and English-language arts sections, the math section saw a dip in scores.
Students tested at VCS scored within three percentage points of the state average in 17 of the 34 categories and exceeded the state average in three additional categories.
As Superintendent Dr. Bill Cason projected, the first year testing mathematics under the new Georgia Performance Standards curriculum saw a dip in scores for the third, fourth, fifth and eighth-grades.
“I anticipated, especially in the math area because it is the first time the kids have taken the test based on the new curriculum, a drop in scores based on the GPS changing from the old Quality Core Curriculum standards,” Cason said.
In 30 of the 34 categories the students were tested in within the Lowndes County School System, the students met the school systems goals, Superintendent Dr. Steve Smith said.
The target goals for the system are to score two percentage points higher when the state average is 90 percent or higher and to score five percentage points higher than the state average when it is below 90 percent, Smith said.
The number of students that attended the LCS summer tutorial more than doubled from the year before, Smith said.
Most of those students came from the fifth and eighth-grades, pivotal years in learning, where a failing test score may mean another year spent in the same grade, Smith said.
LCS had 49 percent or 20 of 41 third-graders retested for reading pass, while 47 percent or 30 of the 64 fifth-graders retested for reading passed. For fifth-grade math, 70 percent or 131 of the 187 students that retested passed.
The VCS summer school for those who failed reading and/or math CRCT portions has wrapped up and those results are in as well.
Though students have the option of taking the summer courses, 36 third-graders failed the reading portion of the CRCT after summer school. For the fifth-grade reading portion, 54 students failed and 105 failed the math portion.
The eighth-grade reading portion of the CRCT had 37 students fail after the conclusion of the summer program and 170 eighth-graders failed the math portion at VCS.
The CRCT tutorial was given over the month of June with the students retaking the test at the end of June.
While Smith and the rest of the staff at LCS have high expectations for their students regarding the tests, he said the key is to set realistic goals. The goals of LCS for the CRCT are to improve the scores of the school each year and score higher than the state in each area.
If a child only fails one part of the CRCT the student, parents and teachers meet to discuss what would benefit the child more, being held back a year to succeed at the information missed or moving forward and working outside of the classroom to catch up.
VCS curriculum teams met throughout the summer designing programs to make sure students that struggled this year would have a better chance at succeeding next year, Cason said.
“This new curriculum the state has come up with, the Georgia Performance Standards is more rigorous, it’s more detailed and not only do the kids have to learn but our teachers have to learn to teach it because it’s different, it’s presented in a different way and is a huge adjustment for everybody,” Cason said.
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