State Board of Education members expressed surprise and dismay Friday about the poor performance of Georgia students on the new coordinate algebra end-of-course test.
Sixty-three percent of test takers failed to meet the state standard, leading some board members to question whether teachers had gotten enough training on how to teach the course and whether the state moved to it too quickly.
As early as January, when the first end-of-course test results came in for coordinate algebra, staff members at the state Department of Education had warned the scores wouldn’t be pretty. It’s a new test of more rigorous material tied to national education standards, and other states moving to new tests also saw lower scores, they said.
However, that didn’t mollify some on the board.
“I’m sorry,” board member Mary Sue Murray said as a staff member was making a presentation on the end-of-course test results. “I am very disturbed by this. Why did 63 percent not meet the state standard?”
Sandi Woodall, program director for mathematics, told Murray she and her colleagues are still going over the data.
“I need to drill down and come back to you and say, ‘These are the factors that are the most credible,’” Woodall said.
One factor could have been teacher training, Woodall said. The state offered training, she said, but it did not mandate that the training be taken.
That didn’t sit well with board member Brian Burdette.
“I don’t appreciate that we have to deal with this 63 number at the state level, which isn’t good,” he said. “We ought to make them train.”
The state and many school districts are offering additional training this summer on coordinate algebra and on analytical geometry, another new math course that will be taught for the first time this fall.
Murray wondered aloud whether the state should have found a way to phase in coordinate algebra.
“It’s like the high jump,” she said. “You set the bar so high they’ll never get over it.”
Another board member, Mike Royal, said moving to coordinate algebra was the right call, despite the bitter pill offered by the poor end-of-course test results.
“If we do not have an honest assessment of whether our students are truly ready for college, then we’re whistling past the graveyard,” he said. “This is a wake-up call. Frankly, I’m not surprised.”
Board Chairwoman Barbara Hampton said she believes the scores will rise in the future.
“This is just the first run,” she said. “The bar has been set.”
Georgia threw out the results of the social studies Criterion-Referenced Competency Test in 2008, with state officials saying the test was flawed. But Melissa Fincher, associate superintendent for assessment accountability, said that won’t happen this time.
“We do not feel there is an issue with the test,” she said.
State school Superintendent John Barge said a variety of factors need to be addressed in raising the scores.
“We’re going to learn from this,” he said. “It’s staff; it’s capacity; it’s finances. It’s going to take some time to get all of our teachers where they need to be with the resources we have. Our teachers are working extremely hard.”
