Online Athens reports that school officials in Clarke County (GA) are concerned about sagging - and conflicting - math scores among students enrolled in middle and high school:
The Clarke County school board got a snapshot look at district math achievement during its regular monthly meeting Thursday - a chart of standardized test results that showed only 47 percent of eighth-graders met or exceeded the benchmark math score on the state's Criterion-Referenced Competency Test given in the spring. A year earlier, 57 percent had met or exceeded the benchmark as seventh-graders, and 58 percent had done so as sixth-graders in 2001.
In a similar drop, 56 percent of sixth-graders met or exceeded the achievement benchmark on the spring CRCT. Last year, 62 percent of the same class met or exceeded the benchmark as fifth-graders...
Definitely not good news. For some reason, the same cohort that is moving through the county's schools is becoming less likely to meet grade-related benchmarks as they proceed.
Administrators believe the downward trend in test scores through middle school is a symptom of the same lack of math comprehension that leaves many high-school freshmen floundering in algebra class - which they must have to graduate. The struggle for many students has been a concern of some school board members in the past, and Cedar Shoals and Clarke Central high schools have begun offering pre-algebra and Algebra I classes as year-long classes, rather than semester-long, in one attempt to help students.
You mean these high schools were teaching Algebra I within a semester, instead of using an entire year for that? Why the rush, unless what they're calling "pre-algebra" is just part of Algebra I? And move forward three years, and things get more interesting, as passing rates on the high school exit exam rapidly increase:
Math scores skyrocket between eighth-grade CRCTs and the Georgia High School Graduation Test given in the junior year of high school...Superintendent Lewis Holloway told school board members that part of the reason scores jump on the high-school test is because many of the students who have struggled academically have begun dropping out by that point and therefore aren't taking the test. The test also is not very rigorous and is being revamped by the state, school board member Denise Mewborn pointed out.
Well, here are the online content descriptions for every grade for the math CRCTs. Skip to page 69 to peruse the eighth-grade content. The content appears fairly extensive and includes geometric and algebraic concepts. Sample items may be found here; the items seem pretty straightforward.
And here are the content descriptions for the math portion of the Georgia High School Graduation Test. The Geometry and Algebra constructs being measured do not seem to be any more rigorous than those listed for the Grade 8 CRCT.
Here's the student guide from the DOE. Notice that an item which requires a student to calculate the following is listed as having a high cognitive level:
6. "One gallon of paint will cover 800 square feet. How many gallons of paint are needed to cover a wall that is 8 feet high and 200 feet long?"
Why is this considered to be one of the more difficult items on the exam? Because it requires test takers to "know how to find the area of a rectangle and to know when finding the area will help solve a problem."
I think Ms. Mewborn might have a point about the rigors of the exit exam. From my admittedly-cursory examination, it appears that the graduation exam is not much more difficult than the eighth-grade exam, and this could definitely explain the contradictory scores. Students who are failing in math in eighth grade either drop out or have almost three more years to master the eighth-grade material before taking the exit exam.
Posted by kswygert at November 18, 2003 05:17 PM