When climbing a mountain, success is measured in small steps.
Such is the challenge that has faced Georgia schools for years. Once famously near the bottom of the list of states for education, Georgia ranked 30th in last year’s U.S. News and World Report K-12 school survey. The mountain is high in
The mountain is high in Greene County, where a history of low scores and high poverty already challenges educators. Then a plan to rearrange grades K-8 into different buildings to create better learning environments was disrupted by a two-year, crippling pandemic that closed schools and sent students home to learn. At the same time, a very public legal conflict developed between county educators.
It is with this backdrop that the Greene County School System on Monday night reported the results of the statewide Georgia Milestones tests taken in May by students in grades three through high school.
School Improvement and Accountability coordinator Tom McClendon emphasized that the numbers released last Friday by the state are still subject to change. Rather than display hundreds of mind-numbing figures on the screen, McClendon’s presentation was laser focused on key areas of improvement.
The bright spot is the third grade at Greene County Primary School, where the mathematics tests showed that about 60 percent of the students scored at or above grade level. This beat the state average of 40 percent and was just four points shy of the 64 percent at Lake Oconee Academy.
School Superintendent Chris Houston said the third grade is a critical point in a child’s life. Children who are not at or above grade level in reading will have a much less likelihood of a successful future. The critical point for mathematics, Houston said, is fifth grade.
McClendon also computed one overall Milestone score for elementary grades 3-5 by averaging together the two tests taken in those grades – math and english language arts (ELA), which includes reading.
The result indicated that 29 percent of the elementary students scored at or above grade level. That was a big improvement over the score of 20 on the pre-pandemic 2019 Milestones.
Average overall scores for the middle (grades 6-8) and high school (grades 9-12) were down five and two points respectively from 2019, showing those grades have not quite recovered from learning loss during the pandemic.
McClendon also said the overall average elementary scores in math and ELA showed that the gaps are narrowing when compared to LOA and the state average.
In 2019, when 20 percent of the elementary students at GCPS scored at or above grade level, LOA was 45 points higher at 65 percent, and the state average was 25 points higher than GCPS at 45 percent.
In 2022, McClendon said, when 29 percent of the students at GCPS scored at or above grade level, LOA was 24 points better at 53 percent and the state average was only 11 points better at 40 percent.
McClendon said this shows good improvement in GCPS, especially the third grade.
“As those students move through the grade levels,” McClendon said, “we’ve got to consolidate the good grades and move them forward to see those high test scores and high achievement continue. That doesn’t mean we ignore anyone above that. We need to get them there as well.”
While the mood at the BOE meeting Monday night was upbeat, everyone in the room knew that it’s a step forward on what will be a steep climb.
The raw results
Averaging scores from multiple tests over multiple grades does give a glimmer of hope for the future, but drilling down into specific tests in specific grades reveals the huge challenge ahead.
Tests in every grade show that the majority of students at GCSS schools (not including LOA) scored below grade level proficiency in the May 2022 Milestones.
Most times, scores were below the average statewide and LOA scores, although the gaps varied from wide to razor thin.
For example, in the GCSS fifth grade, 57 percent of the students could read at or above the state standard for proficiency. The state average was about 70 percent and LOA had 83 percent.
By comparison, Putnam County fifth graders scored 72 percent, Morgan County 78 percent and Rocky Branch Elementary in Oconee County had 95 percent of its fifth graders read at or above grade level.
In fifth grade mathematics, both GCSS and LOA scored below the state average of 37 percent in proficiency. GCSS had 15 percent while LOA was at 33 percent.
Few older students scored at or above proficiency in Milestones tests taken in selected courses.
Ten percent of the eighth-grade students tested were proficient in mathematics, 8.1 percent in science, 14.5 percent in social studies.
At the high school level, 8.2 percent scored at or above grade level in American Literature and Composition, 25.9 percent in biology and 1.3 percent in U.S. History.
Reaching the summit
In a perfect world, 100 percent of all students will score at or above their grade level, but that doesn’t happen.
Greene County has programs in place to help students near proficiency achieve it and bring those students far behind closer to the standards.
For high schoolers, the College and Career Academy offers students various educational and practical paths to higher education or the start of a new career. Each ninth grader is assigned an adult volunteer as a career coach who will mentor them through the entire four years of high school.
The on-campus Foothills School offers classes outside of regular school hours to make it easier for students to learn more while avoiding conflicts during the daytime.
Lynch and Houston say the school system is being stricter about holding back children who cannot read by third grade or fail to show proficiency in math by fifth grade. Until recent years, Lynch says, some students were moved up to the next grade despite not being ready.
“The most important thing we’ve got to do is stop jumping kids out of the third and fifth grade who can’t read and write and can’t do the math,” Lynch told the Lake Oconee News.
McLendon said, of the approximately 100 third graders at GCPS last year, 13 were held back.
The improvements of Greene County’s third-grade students shown in the 2022 Milestones despite the coronavirus pandemic is a small but positive step on which to build the future.
“It will be interesting to see,” Lynch said, “how many schools actually went up pre-COVID to COVID. LOA didn’t. Very few [did]. We did. And we did it with a hodgepodge of structure, with a lot of change.”
He is convinced that when kindergarten through fifth-grade students is together in the new school building on Meadow Crest Road in August 2024, it will boost their performance.
“We were facility constrained,” he said. “We did not have a facility big enough to do an elementary school. Greensboro Elementary was falling apart and wasn’t big enough, either. When we can put all that together it’s going to be phenomenal.”
The new school year starts Monday.
Detailed results of the 2022 Milestone are available at the Georgia Department of Education website by scanning the code below.