Editorial: Prepare, Georgia: These numbers won't be pretty
Ever since the new Georgia Milestones academic tests were designed as a replacement for past standardized exams like the familiar Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests (CRCTs), state education officials have been warning that these are far more challenging tests likely to produce significantly lower scores.
With the release of the first round of Georgia Milestones results due early next month, the official campaign to condition public expectations has renewed and intensified.
"What we had," Melissa Fincher, state deputy superintendent for assessment and accountability, told the Macon Telegraph, "was a series of testing systems that didn't send a coherent signal of student achievement."
That would appear to be quite an understatement. In 2013, 93 percent of the state's fourth-graders were rated as proficient in reading on the CRCT; on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, it was 34 percent. The math numbers were similarly out of whack: 83 percent of Georgia eighth-graders scored as proficient on the CRCT -- and 29 percent on the national test. The question of whether the CRCT really assessed any "competency" beyond that of the people who designed the test does not seem, under the circumstances, an unfair one.
The digital divide
A more realistic assessment of student achievement came with the state's own end-of-course test in algebra, in which just 37 percent of students scored as proficient. That's not a very encouraging number, but it's not a deceptively rosy one, either -- which is exactly the point.
Speaking of education, it is increasingly undeniable with every passing day that Internet access has become as fundamental a tool of contemporary learning as pencils and notebooks, and every bit as essential.
Yet that access is still far from universal. According to census stats, as household income decreases, the statistical likelihood of children in those households having Internet access drops precipitously -- to less than 50 percent in homes with an annual income of $25,000 or less.
In that context, two telecom companies that have been offering affordable Internet service to low-income families in southeast Alabama are exemplifying good corporate citizenship.
The Dothan Eagle reported this week that CenturyLink's Internet Basics and Comcast's Internet Essentials are available to families based on criteria like children's eligibility for school meal programs, or family income as a function of the federal poverty level or eligibility for state or federal assistance.
No doubt there are other companies making these kinds of contributions to the education process. Whether or not they get the recognition they deserve, the service they provide is invaluable.
This story was originally published August 26, 2015 at 6:06 PM with the headline "Editorial: Prepare, Georgia: These numbers won't be pretty."