Georgia raises the bar on student achievement, and more students fail

3. The Georgia Milestones are harder than those retired tests in that the bar for passing — the testers call it “proficiency” — has been raised. A proportionately larger group of students is expected to fail this test. Failure triggers mandatory discussions between schools and parents about repeating a grade.

4. The results are broken into four categories: “beginning,” which means not proficient (these are the students subject to being held back), and “developing,” “proficient” and “distinguished.”

5. The scores between the old and new tests can’t be compared for several technical reasons, but national comparisons are possible because samples of questions from national tests are embedded. The Georgia Deparment of Education will release the results from those sample questions later this year.

More students failed Georgia’s new public school achievement tests, and officials say that’s a good thing because it proves they created rigorous exams that are more in line with the rest of the country.

“These results show a lower level of student proficiency than Georgians are used to seeing, but that does not mean Georgia students know less or that teachers are not doing a great job,” state schools Superintendent Richard Woods said. “It means they’ve been asked to clear a higher bar.”

The old Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests and high school End of Course Tests “set some of the lowest expectations for student proficiency in the nation,” said Woods, who took office in January.

The preliminary results released Thursday were statewide averages by grade and subject that divided students into four levels of performance, from failing to “distinguished.” Some expect a push back from parents when the actual student scores are delivered in October.

“There’ll be a little bit of a backlash for sure because we need someone to blame,” said Lisa-Marie Haygood, a Cherokee County parent and Georgia’s new state PTA president. “I think you’re going to feel a knee-jerk reaction immediately.”

Haygood applauded the higher test expectations. “It’s not fair to tell people they’re great if they’re just OK,” she said. “It’s going to be a better measure of where we are.”

Georgia felt pressure to raise its standards because its testing system routinely ranked at, or near the bottom, for rigor.

The national education advocacy group Achieve and the National Center for Education Statistics, a federal agency, each compared performance on Georgia's tests against against the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal exam given to a sample of children across the country. Georgia had some of the biggest gaps between pass rates on its own tests and those on the federal test. For instance, 94 percent of the state's fourth graders met standards on the reading portion of the 2014 CRCT, while only 34 percent did so on the 2013 federal NAEP.

The gaps have all but disappeared with the new Milestones results, but there is a price for such honesty. Failure in future years in math and English in certain grades will trigger a legally-mandated meeting between a school and parents to discuss whether the child should be held back a grade.

State education officials are bracing for a reaction.

“Any time historically when we’ve tried to raise the expectations for our kids there’s been an outcry that something’s wrong with the test,” said Melissa Fincher, a deputy superintendent over testing at the Georgia Department of Education.

The test results are used to judge more than students: teachers, principals and schools can also be punished for poor scores. The Georgia General Assembly this year passed a constitutional amendment that empowers the state to take over "persistently failing" schools and run them, often as charter schools, with money appropriated from local taxpayers. Also, a panel appointed by Gov. Nathan Deal is considering an overhaul of funding that would encourage school districts to pay teachers based on performance rather than on experience or education.

Bertis Downs, an Athens parent, contends that the tightening of the test-based screws is part of a coordinated effort to demonize public schools, especially high-poverty schools, which typically perform worse on tests.

Downs, who is on the board of the Network for Public Education, a national school advocacy group that is critical of testing, suspects it’s part of a national effort to generate business for profit-driven charter management companies and testing corporations.

“If you’re selling lifeboats, then the best thing for business is to convince people that the ship is sinking,” he said.

Others say educators need to be held accountable and that rising graduation rates and other measures indicate the testing mandates in place since passage of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act are working.

Congress is considering a rollback of the high stakes testing, but President Barack Obama’s education secretary, Arne Duncan, has insisted that testing for accountability is necessary to ensure all students are getting an education. Duncan’s senior advisor, John B. King, Jr., visited The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in February and reiterated that position.

“We think it’s important for folks to have information each year based on statewide testing,” said King, who previously was commissioner of education in New York state, home of a frothy rebellion against testing.

If Congress were to back pedal on the mandate, it would be up to state leaders to determine the future of testing. And there is support for continued testing among Republicans in control of the Georgia General Assembly.

“If our students are deficient, I’d rather know where they’re deficient so I’ll know where we need to be working,” said Sen. Lindsey Tippins, R-Marietta, a key lawmaker on education policy.

Tippins supports both testing and the new standards and increased rigor. He also likes that Georgia’s new tests, unlike those from years before, will allow comparisons against students in other states since they contain sample questions from national tests.

Competing only against other Georgians is “like bragging about winning a race when you’re jogging with people from the nursing home,” said Tippins, who chairs the Senate Education and Youth Committee. “We need national competition.”