Sunday, June 01, 2008
Opinion

Testing out of the CRCT

Get out your No. 2 pencils!

By Diane Loupe

Get out your No. 2 pencils. Time to test how much you know about how Georgia schools evaluate what students know in some subjects. No peeking. 

1. Which of the following statements is NOT true about Georgia’s Criterion-Referenced Competency Test, or CRCT?

A. Measures what students should know and be able to do at their grade level, based on the state's curriculum.
B. Failed 70 to 80 percent of sixth- and seventh-graders on most recent social studies test.
C. Failed 40 percent of Georgia's 124,000 eighth-graders in math. (50,000 students failed in math.)
D. Compares what Georgia students know to what students in other states know. 
E. Helps determine whether schools that fall short of goals will face severe sanctions set by the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
F. Sections on reading, English/language arts, and mathematics, must be taken by all students in grades one through eight in and sections on science and social studies must be taken by students in grades three through eight.

2. Which of the following is not true of the Georgia Department of Education?

A. Predicted, based on field testing, that as many as half of eighth-graders would fail the math CRCT on their first try.
B. Knew that 69 percent of sixth and seventh grade students failed a practice test of the social studies portion of the CRCT.
C. Made sure that schools and teachers would know it was likely that the failure rate on the CRCT test would be high.
D. Pays $12.5 million per year to testing contractor CTB/McGraw-Hill.
E. Threw out CRCT results for social studies in grades six and seven after determining that they weren’t “trustworthy measures of student achievement in social studies.”

3. Which of these facts or skills is not part of the middle school social studies section of the CRCT?

A. Analyze the impact of the Cuban Revolution.
B. Discuss the importance of the breakup of the Ottoman Empire after World War II.
C. Explain the collapse of the Soviet Union; include the failure of communism, the rise of the desire for freedom, and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
D. Locate on a map the nations of Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Fiji and Vanuatu.
E. Explain the importance of petroleum reserves to the defense of Israel, founded as a nation in 1948.

4. Five of these statements are true of Georgia Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox. Which two are true of her predecessor, Linda Schrenko?

A) Was a high school social studies teacher for 15 years, teaching World History and American Government.
B) Was reelected in 2006 as state superintendent with the second-highest vote total in the state.
C) Sentenced to eight years in prison after being charged with embezzling more than $600,000 in federal education funds, some of which she spent on a face lift.
D) Earned a Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees in Political Science from Emory University.
E) Shares the same name as Georgia’s former Secretary of State.
F) Helped create Georgia’s first series of CRCT.

5. Which is not true of standardized tests?
A. Students from low-income and minority-group backgrounds are more likely to be retained in grade, placed in a lower track, or put in special or remedial education programs by testing scores.
B. Tests are more likely to place children from white, middle and upper income in “gifted and talented” or college preparatory programs.
C. The U.S. is the only economically advanced nation to rely heavily on multiple-choice tests.
Because other First World nations assess students on the basis of real work such as essays, projects and activities, their students score lower on multiple-choice tests than U.S. students do.
D. The U.S. has no national test that every student in every state takes to demonstrate mastery of a central body of knowledge and skills.
E. The SAT measures academic achievement across a wide range of subjects for all students.

Based in various media reports, match the author with their quotes:

6. Carole Boyce, Gwinnett County Board of Education chair
7. Herb Garrett, Georgia School Superintendents Association executive director
8. Brian Stecher, senior social scientist with RAND Corp
9. Rick Breault, associate professor of education at Kennesaw State University
10. Karla Penn, mother of an eighth-grader who failed the math test in DeKalb County
11. Georgia School Superintendent Kathy Cox


A. “We put too much in the curriculum for teachers to teach and didn’t get specific enough on what they had to teach.”
B. “State officials should not be in such a state of bewilderment when they put in place a new, extensive social studies curriculum, give little incentive to teach it, and then have children score poorly on tests.”
C. “Any time you have that level of failure almost statewide, you’ve got to go back and re-examine the test and re-examine everything associated with the test.”
D. “We feel strongly our kids are proficient.”
 E. “This whole thing is a fiasco. How can they think this is fair to the kids?"
F. “Test scores are fallible and people have to realize that.”

Answer key:

1. D Georgia’s test measures only knowledge of the state’s curriculum.
2. C (didn’t warn.)
3. B (Empire collapsed after WWI) and E, Israel lacks petroleum reserves.
4. C and F.
5. D and F. In some states, the SAT measures only college-bound students’ aptitude for college work. In Georgia, nearly every student takes it, even if they’re not planning to go to college.
6. D, 7-C, 8-F, 9-B, 10-E and 11-A.

SP

Freelance writer Diane Loupe is filling in for columnist Stephanie Ramage.