CRCT results due this week

Principal Patty Heitmuller filled spreadsheets with preliminary test scores showing how her students performed on the state’s Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests.

She pored over the information to calculate how Radloff Middle School in Duluth performed on the test and to predict whether the Gwinnett County school met federal testing goals.

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Bita Honarvar/bhonarvar@ajc.com

Oscar Avendano reads an assignment as part of a group exercise in his seventh-grade language arts class during summer school at Duluth’s Radloff Middle School.

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Failure to meet those goals could have a serious impact on both students and their schools.

The state is scheduled to release school-by-school CRCT results this week, but with the stakes being so high, many principals, including Heitmuller, couldn’t wait.

“If you run a business and you anticipate a profit or a loss, you’re not going to wait for an official statement to come out,” she said. “You look at the data along the way to see how it’s lining up.”

Dana Tofig, a spokesman for the state Department of Education, acknowledges that some schools “have gotten smart and they can figure it out on their own.”

“They have access to all the data, so there’s nothing stopping them,” Tofig said. “But we caution them not to say anything until official results come out. There are just too many variables.”

The CRCT results carry enormous weight and, thus, added pressure for schools, teachers and students. The tests show whether students are learning what the state says they need to know. Kids who fail can be required to repeat a grade.

The state Department of Education also uses students’ math, reading and English scores on the CRCT to help determine whether elementary and middle schools met the testing requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. High schools use a different exam.

The federal law expects schools to continually improve learning and make adequate yearly progress (AYP). Those that fail repeatedly are labeled as “needs improvement” schools and face sanctions, which could mean offering free tutoring, hiring a new staff or principal, or, possibly, being taken over by the state.

Of Georgia’s more than 2,100 public schools, 307 bear the stigma of being classified as “needs improvement,” according to documents from the state Department of Education.

They include 105 schools that improved enough last year to make AYP. If they make AYP a second straight year, they will then be in compliance with the federal law and shed the “needs improvement” status — which is a big deal because, as long as that moniker hangs on a school, students are allowed to transfer.

The tests

Schools can’t just look at CRCT results and automatically tell whether they met federal testing goals.

The state Education Department uses a complex formula, including math results and combined scores from the reading and language arts CRCT exams. While students in grades 1-8 take the state test, scores from first- and second-graders are not considered for the federal rules.

The federal law requires states to gradually increase passing rates so that 100 percent of a school’s students must pass by 2014. This year, elementary and middle schools need 59.5 percent of their students to pass the state math tests and 73.3 percent to pass the combined English exams.

The state analyzes a school’s overall score and results from groups of students, such as minorities, children from low-income homes, students with disabilities and children whose first language was not English. The entire school fails if just one group misses the mark.

The pressures

Oakley Elementary School in south Fulton County failed to make AYP last year — its first year of operation — because of its CRCT math scores.

“It’s always disappointing because unfortunately that [the AYP status] sometimes is the only thing anybody ever hears about your school,” principal Vonnie Thompson said. “People just then say it is a failing school.”

After last year’s CRCT, Thompson said she and key staff sat down with each third-, fourth- and fifth-grader at the school. The children were shown their scores and told how many questions kept them from passing.

“And they were very surprised,” Thompson said.

She’s seen some preliminary numbers that lead her to believe the school will be 1 percentage point from making AYP again this year, based on the spring CRCT results.

But she’s optimistic that, with the summer school scores, her school will make AYP.

“AYP is just a one-shot evaluation, and it doesn’t always tell the success of our schools,” Thompson said.

Schools across Georgia devote countless hours preparing their students for the CRCT.

At DeKalb County’s Atherton Elementary School, which would have missed making AYP last year were it not for now-in-question results from a summer retest, students took practice tests from September until March. The results were used to analyze the students’ progress in reading and math.

The school tried other tactics, such as giving out a “word of the week” on Mondays and holding “Cram Jams” in April that kept the students busy from 4 to 10 p.m., as part of an intense CRCT review. Parents were brought in for Math Night in April.

At least four schools — including Atherton Elementary — have been the focus of a state probe into allegations that some test scores were altered on a CRCT retest last year. In each case, the higher scores helped the schools meet federal standards.

Jo Ann Mitchell-Stringer, a mother of four from Clayton County, looks at the CRCT scores and whether her child’s school made AYP. But, she said, her bigger concern is: Does she see her child making progress?

She knows, though, that CRCT anxiety is very real in the schools.

“It’s like you wake up CRCT,” Mitchell-Stringer said. “You go to sleep CRCT.”

It’s drummed into the parents, as well. “We even get messages at home,” Mitchell-Stringer said. “Make sure the children are on time and make sure they have a good breakfast.”

She said she works at trying to make the testing process as stress-free as possible.

“I try not to let them fear. I just tell them you can do it,” she said. “You have to be their cheerleader.”

Radloff seeks new ways

If Radloff Middle School meets federal goals this year, the school can shed the label of a needs improvement school and the stigma associated with it.

“You don’t want to see a bad label for your school,” Heitmuller said. “You know what people must think, but you can’t focus on that. We focus on making progress and succeeding. We want to be a source of pride for the community.”

In the past Radloff has struggled with math, particularly for students with disabilities. Danyel Dollard is a sixth-grade special education math teacher at the school, putting her on the front line.

“I don’t want to say it was my fault, but when you see that it’s the subject you teach and you see that the kids you care about are struggling, it hurts,” Dollard said. “I felt like all eyes were on me. You could let it get you down, or you could focus and figure out new lessons and new ways to make your students successful.”

She reviewed essential skills measured on the exam and tried to improve her lessons. She also got the students involved. She helped them set goals and made them aware of how they — and their school — did on the test.

“For them, it becomes a personal mission,” Dollard said. “They want to do better, and they want to pass, and that helps the school as a whole.

“We’re on the verge, but we don’t want to just get off the needs improvement list,” Dollard said. “We want to be up there with the best.”

What does principal Heitmuller’s analysis show? She wouldn’t say for sure, but her poker face couldn’t hide a smile.

“Now this is just our number crunching,” she said, “but it looks like we’ve done well, very well.”