My children go to the neighborhood DeKalb County Public Schools, my wife and I are very active in their education and do everything we can to help them academically. Because we believe that the education of our children is a partnership between the schools and ourselves, I do not personally place that much weight on the overall schools scores but I do want to know my individual child's score and where he may need additional educational assistance.
Georgia schools are evaluated each year based on their CRCT scores and it appears to me that so much is now based on these test scores that the schools not only teach to the tests, but from recent news stories it also may appear that the "system" may actually condone the cheating and manipulation of student achievement scores. If I was a parent who believed that my child was doing OK when he actually had educational deficiencies; I would not only be angry, I would feel betrayed and cheated.
If you are interested in discussing and commenting on this topic, please do so but I would recommend that you read the articles and more importantly the comments on the DeKalb County School Watch Blog as I believe that I am only scratching the surface of this topic here, whereby that blog is dedicated solely to improving the DeKalb County School System.
Dunwoody CRCT Test Scores
Below is an AJC article posting individual school CRCT scores and for those who are interested, I have posted a photo of the Dunwoody school scores as well as placed the information into a spreadsheet.
The Georgia Department of Education released official individual school results on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests on July 7.
Public school students in grades 1-8 are required to take the CRCT in reading, English and math. Students in grades 3-8 also take science and social studies exams. Results are not available for grades 6-7 for Social Studies due to a new test being used.
Third-graders must pass the reading exam for promotion. Students in grades five and eight must pass the reading and math tests for promotion.
Click here for Excel file.
I don't have a school-aged child, and when I did we (read: my wife) homeschooled, so I don't have a dog in this hunt and I've found that generally devalues any opinion I might hold in regards to public education. However, that hasn't stopped me yet...
ReplyDeleteOne would think, with all the information we have available, that there could be no denying that our public schools (and by that I mean even Dunwoody) are a failure. One would be wrong. It never ceases to amaze me how parents (and I'm not pointing a finger at anyone) can acknowledge that the US is lagging many other countries, that Georgia performs at the bottom within the US, that DCSS is amongst the worst in GA, but their child is getting a world-class education. They can only be thinking Third World---and that has to exclude Cuba and a few other notables.
Things won't change until either these parents realize they're just a tiny wee-bit biased in their evaluations or they recognize that their child's legitimate successes occur in spite of the schools and not because of them.
Like I said, I don't have a dog in this hunt.
Update on grade inflation changes in DeKalb.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.wsbtv.com/video/20007801/