Students in Fayette, Forsyth and Decatur school systems outperformed their metro-area peers on 2012 state exams, according to scores released Thursday.
Forsyth students led the pack, earning the top scores in 21 out of 30 tested subjects on the Georgia Criterion-Referenced Competency Test, which is given annually to public school students in grades three through eight. Meanwhile, students in Clayton, DeKalb and Atlanta trailed in tested subjects.
The CRCT measures whether students are testing on grade level in English/language arts, social studies, reading, math and science. Traditionally, the test was considered the primary indicator of a school's performance, but that's changing under new state rules.
Overall, Georgia students improved on the exam for the third year in a row, according to results released earlier this month. English/language arts, social studies and reading results increased this year, while math and science scores remained flat or dropped slightly.
School-level CRCT data is not expected to be released until mid-July.
Thursday's district-level results offer a snapshot of how performance varies in school systems across the metro area. For example, in eighth-grade math, 59.3 percent of Atlanta Public Schools students met or exceeded test standards, while 95.3 percent of Forsyth students earned a passing score or higher.
DeKalb County Schools most often trailed, earning the lowest score in 14 tested subjects. But DeKalb school officials said overall, students showed promising improvement from the 2011 exam. The district expects the trend to continue as it makes changes this year to strengthen the curriculum.
"We don't gauge ourselves by other districts. We gauge ourselves by how our students are growing year after year," said Walter Woods, district spokesman. "And our students have shown very positive improvement this year."
The CRCT will be de-emphasized in the coming years as Georgia moves away from federal No Child Left Behind accountability measures to a new accountability system of its own. Since 2000, the exams were critical in determining whether schools met annual academic goals, known as adequate yearly progress or AYP. Schools and districts that didn't meet goals, which increased every year, were subject to sanctions under state and federal law.
Soon, the state will introduce a new index system that will assign each school a numerical rating from 1 to 100, and CRCT results will be one of several factors that make up a school's rating.
But for now, some parents still view CRCT results as an important indicator of academic success. DeKalb parent Barb Bowman was disappointed by her school system's performance, especially in eighth-grade math. The score of 66.4 was among the worst in metro Atlanta.
"That is pathetic," said Bowman, who has two kids in high school and another in college. "If you put that on a 100-point scale, that's failing."
Newsroom data specialist Kelly Guckian and staff writer Ty Tagami contributed to this article.
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