CRCT scores continue to lag in many metro Atlanta schools

The Georgia Department of Education is ending the CRCT this year and replacing it with the Georgia Milestones initiative, but the 2014 scores show that many of metro Atlanta’s younger southside students continue to have trouble meeting state standards in several subjects.

Credit: AJC FILE

Credit: AJC FILE

The Georgia Department of Education is ending the CRCT this year and replacing it with the Georgia Milestones initiative, but the 2014 scores show that many of metro Atlanta’s younger southside students continue to have trouble meeting state standards in several subjects.


A CLOSER LOOK: HOW GEORGIA'S 3RD, 5TH AND 8TH GRADERS DID ON THE CRCT

The Georgia Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests (CRCT) is given every year in reading, English/language arts and math in first through eighth-grades. Students third through eight are also tested in science and social studies.

CRCT PERFORMANCE CHARTS

» STATEWIDE: 3rd Grade | 5th Grade | 8th Grade| 8th Grade Math

DISTRICT-BY-DISTRICT

» 3rd GRADE: APS | Clayton | Cobb | DeKalb | Fulton | Gwinnett

» 5th GRADE: APS | Clayton | Cobb | DeKalb | Fulton | Gwinnett

» 8th GRADE: APS | Clayton | Cobb | DeKalb | Fulton | Gwinnett

Many elementary and middle schools along metro Atlanta’s southside continue to have trouble meeting state standards in several subjects, particularly math, according to Georgia Department of Education data released Tuesday.

For example, more than half of the third-graders in 14 Atlanta district elementary schools did not meet Georgia’s Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests standards for math, the numbers showed. In DeKalb County, state data showed at least one half of the eighth-graders in seven middle schools did not meet the CRCT standards in math. At least one in five third-graders did not meet the CRCT standards in science in each Clayton County school, the numbers showed.

Tuesday's numbers are the latest round of results highlights the progress of individual schools on the state-mandated exams. The state's results can be found here.

In many cases, the same schools repeated troubling performances. One third of the third-graders in Atlanta’s D.H. Stanton Elementary School did not meet the CRCT reading standards, a slight increase from the 31.4 percent who didn’t meet the standards in 2013. The percentage of fifth-graders in that school who did not meet the math standards rose from 12.5 percent to 36.7 percent, the data showed.

» VIEW SCORES: 2014 CRCT school-by-school results

There were some apparent success stories in the numbers. The percentage of fifth-graders in DeKalb’s Briar Vista Elementary School who did not meet the CRCT math standards fell from nearly 30 percent in 2013 to about two percent in 2014.

The Georgia Department of Education is ending the CRCT this year and replacing it with the Georgia Milestones initiative, which is designed to be more rigorous and better measure the critical thinking skills of students.