Georgia’s schools scored a record high on the 2017 College and Career Ready Performance Index (CCRPI), and the percentage of schools with a 5-star climate rating also showed an increase, according to information released Thursday by the Georgia Department of Education.
The state score for Georgia’s high schools was 77, up from 75.7 in 2016. The middle school score increased to 73, up from 71.5 in 2016, and the elementary school score increased to 72.9 (up from 71.7 in 2016). The overall state score is 75, an increase from 73.6 in 2016.
“These results point to the continued improvement taking place within Georgia’s public schools,” State School Superintendent Richard Woods said. “I have seen firsthand the efforts Georgia’s educators — particularly Georgia’s classroom teachers — have made to increase the opportunities our students receive, and I could not be more pleased to see increases across so many indicators of academic achievement, from CCRPI to the ACT to the Georgia Milestones assessments.
“With that said, I still believe the CCRPI does not fully capture the great work happening in our public schools,” Woods added. “I’m confident that our proposed refinements to the measurement — as submitted in Georgia’s ESSA state plan — will paint a more accurate picture of overall school quality.”
The CCRPI is Georgia’s statewide accountability system, implemented in 2012 to replace No Child Left Behind’s Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) measurement, after the U.S. Department of Education granted Georgia’s waiver from NCLB. It measures schools and school districts on a 100-point scale based on multiple indicators of performance.
Woods has recommended a number of changes to the CCRPI calculation as part of Georgia’s state plan for the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The plan was submitted to the USDOE in September, although Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal did not sign off on the plan. In a letter to Woods, Deal wrote, “The first major area of the plan that should be revised and strengthened is that of state assessments.”
If approved, the new calculation proposed by Woods will apply to the 2018 CCRPI.
“During the two years we spent gathering feedback from the public as we developed our state ESSA plan, we heard over and over that Georgians are setting a higher expectation for their education system,” Woods said. “They expect an education system that places value on opportunities for students — from fine arts to career education — rather than a narrow focus on test scores alone. The refinements to the CCRPI proposed in our ESSA plan are a direct response to that feedback from Georgians and will ensure a system of broad opportunities for students — rather than a focus strictly on standardized test scores, which are an important but incomplete measure of student achievement and school quality.”
As part of the CCRPI reports, the Georgia Department of Education also released the 2017 School Climate Star Ratings for local schools. While the rating is reported alongside the CCRPI, it is not included in the calculation that produces school and district CCRPI scores.
The School Climate Star Rating assesses the climate of a school on a 1-5 scale using the following indicators:
• Survey – a measure of student, teacher, and parent perceptions of a school’s climate
• Student Discipline – a measure of student discipline using a weighted suspension rate
• Safe and Substance-Free Learning Environment – school discipline incidents and student survey responses on use of illegal substances and the prevalence of violence, bullying, and unsafe incidents within a school
• Attendance – the average daily attendance of teachers, administrators, and staff members and the percentage of students with fewer than six unexcused absences.
