Richmond County students show improvements in test scores
AUGUSTA, Ga. - The Richmond County School System made several grade-level improvements and six schools made notable gains in certain subject areas on Georgia Milestones tests.
The local improvements came as Georgia students showed progress on standardized tests given in the 2023-2024 school year, though the jump is far from a quick rebound to pre-pandemic achievement levels as students in some grades and subjects aren’t showing a clear recovery.
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Notable gains on 2023-2024 Georgia Milestones for Richmond County include:
- End-of-course improvements in the subjects of biology and U.S. History across the system.
- Third-, fourth-, fifth-, sixth-, and eighth-graders showed end-of-grade improvement in English language arts.
- Eighth-graders also showed end-of-grade improvements in science and social studies.
- George P. Butler Comprehensive High School and A.R. Johnson Health Science and Engineering Magnet School improved scores in American literature.
- Hephzibah Comprehensive High School and Richmond County Technical Career Magnet School improved scores in biology.
- The Richmond County Technical Career Magnet School, the Academy of Richmond County and Cross Creek Comprehensive High School significantly improved their scores in U.S. history.
Mathematics scores will be released by the Georgia Department of Education later this fall.
“These improvements are a collaborative effort between our educators, staff, and students, and I am grateful for their hard work,” Richmond County Superintendent Dr. Kenneth Bradshaw said. “We will build on these efforts this school year as we focus on student achievement, post-high school readiness, and increasing the number of highly effective teachers and leaders in our system.”
Across the state
Officials in the Georgia Department of Education continue to express confidence in ultimate recovery.
“We saw gains in all grades and courses for English language arts, with the exception of grade 3, which had a one percentage point decrease,” Allison Timberlake, deputy state superintendent for assessment and ability, told reporters Thursday in a briefing.
Proficiency levels — the share of students meeting expectations for what they should know — averaged 43.5% in English language arts in 2019, the last year before the pandemic. In 2024, they averaged 39.5%, up a percentage point on average from 2023.
There were strong gains in proficiency for fifth-grade students, where the 48% proficiency level topped the 45% pre-pandemic level, and in sixth grade. Those fifth-grade students in English language arts were the only ones to record proficiency levels above where they were before the pandemic, across 12 tests istered in multiple grades and subjects.
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But proficiency for fourth-grade students rose by only 1 percentage point, where third-grade levels fell by 1 point. Third graders were in four-year-old prekindergarten in the spring of 2020 when schools were closed for about two months because of COVID-19, and were in kindergarten in 2020-2021 when Georgia students were mostly attending in-person but instruction was still heavily impacted by the pandemic. She said that those students early literacy skills may have been more harmed by the disruption than older students.
One issue is that those students may not have attended school at all during the pandemic. Prekindergarten and kindergarten enrollments were significantly depressed in Georgia in the 2020-2021 school year. Parents aren’t required to enroll their children in either grade, and some parents chose to keep their children home instead of enrolling them during the pandemic.
It wasn’t until March 2024 that 4-year-old prekindergarten enrollment exceeded the level of March 2020 and kindergarten enrollment has never recovered, which may in part be a reflection of falling birth rates.
Achievement levels on three high school tests in American literature and composition and U.S. history rose while scores on the high school biology test declined. Achievement levels for eighth-grade students in science and social studies were mixed.
Officials in the state Department of Education have downplayed the importance of standardized testing under Republican state Superintendent Richard Woods.
Lawmakers this year mandated that the tests be used to assign a single 100-point achievement score to schools and districts for the first time since 2019. The state could also produce such scores for results from the 2022-2023 school year, but it’s unclear if officials will do so.
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