Check out your school's End of Course Test results at MyAJC.com.
An online school in Gwinnett County had the highest average score in a key math course, according to test results released by the Georgia Department of Education late Wednesday afternoon.
Gwinnett Online Campus had a mean scale score of 406 compared with the lowest score in the state of 374. Two thirds of the Gwinnett students passed the test but none at the lowest-scoring school did.
The schools are so vastly different, though, that it’s difficult to compare them against each other or against other schools, using the results from high school End of Course Tests that were given in the spring. The state’s low scorer is a specialty school for blind students. Critics of these state tests note that disabilities and other factors such as poverty are closely tied to outcomes.
Even so, parents can use the results, available at the DOE website, to make their own judgments about their school and how their child rates within it.
“It helps to place the performance of your student in a larger context,” said Marisa Cannata, a researcher at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of education and human development. Cannata, whose research focus includes high school reform and teacher quality, said schools and teachers can use the results, too. “If I have one student who bombed an assessment, it’s probably that student,” she said. “If I have all of my students fail, it’s probably me.”
In early July, when state-level averages were released, the DOE noted improved outcomes in most subjects, including coordinate algebra and ninth-grade literature and composition.
The not-so-good news at the district level: Metro Atlanta students were struggling with math. More than half in several local districts did not meet state standards in several math-related subjects.
The results released Wednesday slice the scores a few ways — by average score in each school and also by percent of test takers who met, exceeded or did not meet the standards.
Critics of Georgia’s testing regimen contend that the results are not all that useful to many parents, in part because the tests set a low bar.
“I am not a fan of minimum competency testing,” said one of the critics, Gerald Eads, an assistant education professor at Georgia Gwinnett College. The test results focus attention, and school resources, on students who are failing, he said. “The bright kids don’t get any attention because they are going to pass.”
Still, pass rates are crucial, especially in a state that struggles with one of the lowest graduation rates in the nation. The DeKalb County School District touted its scores Wednesday, noting that several district schools had 100 percent pass rates in a variety of subjects. At the DeKalb School of the Arts, for instance, 87.5 percent exceeded the standard for ninth-grade literature and composition and the other 12.5 percent met the standard. The school’s literature score was also among the top 10 for the state.
No high school in DeKalb could boast the same success rate with math, though, a shortcoming observed by Superintendent Michael Thurmond. “This indicates a need for more rigorous intervention in improving performance in mathematics,” he said in a prepared statement, “and we are responding with actions that will address this need.”
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