Goal 12: Ensure that all students, without consideration to race, income, age or community, gain the knowledge and life skills required to succeed in the global economy and society.
GOAL 11: Improve the overall quality of education in the region.
INDICATOR: Percentage of K-12 students meeting or exceeding state Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests (CRCTs)
Why is this important?
CRCT results are used by the Georgia Department of Education to evaluate student achievement in math and reading/ Englishlanguage arts (grades one, two) each year.(add Social Studies and Science grades 3 , 4, 5, 6-8) Families and businesses can access the averaged scores for each school and school district to assess overall student achievement.
How are we doing?
In the 2005-2006 school year, approximately 84 percent of all students in K-8 public school systems in the Atlanta region met or exceeded the standards on the CRCTs. This is an actually a small overall decrease in the percentage of students who met or exceeded CRCT standards during the 2004-2005 school year.
Comparing the region's school systems against each other, however, we find that the average "meet or exceed" percentages vary extensively. There is an obvious achievement gap across the school systems in the region, this gap actually increased from a 19 percent gap in 2005 to a 22 percent gap in 2006.
The decrease in the achievement gap is due in large part to the overall increase in the number of students who are meeting or exceeding CRCT standards. The percentage of students who met or exceeded standards increased across the board between 2003-2004 and 2004-2005 school years. To date, most progress has been in the elementary grades since grade 3 reading was the first gateway testing.
An additional data point to consider across school systems is the percent of 3rd graders that met or exceeded reading standards. Approximately, 75 percent of the students identified with reading problems in the third grade see still reading disabled in the ninth grade.
In 2005-2006, the percentage of third grade students who met or exceeded CRCT standards in reading decreased across the board in each of the 14 school systems. 84 percent of third graders in the Atlanta region met or exceeded CRCT Reading standards. This is down from 92 percent in 2003-2004. Scores decreased from as much as 15 percent in Clayton County to 4 percent in Decatur City and Cherokee County schools.
Educational Excellence
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