CRCT Social Studies (ONLY) Results Invalidated

State Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox sent local superintendents the following message today shortly before 3 p.m. It should be noted that this email only impacts Social Studies CRCTs in Grades 6 & 7 and not any other grades or any other subjects:

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Superintendents,

Over the past several days the Georgia Department of Education has been closely monitoring initial results of the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests (CRCT) as they are being processed. The area that has raised great concern is the results for social studies in grades six and seven. Simply, the performance appears to be implausibly low, which raised serious questions.

After intense scrutiny of the standards and the assessment, we have come to the conclusion that these scores are not trustworthy measures of student achievement in social studies. Accordingly, the results will be invalidated. It is important to note that we found nothing technically incorrect with the scoring of these assessments. This decision is based primarily on the conviction that we need to revise the curriculum and the assessments to better evaluate the knowledge and skills that represent student achievement in social studies.

In the coming days, school systems will receive a letter from the Georgia Department of Education that addresses this action. This letter may be used as documentation in student records that the affected scores are nullified.

Additionally, we will empanel a group of teachers and curriculum leaders to revise the social studies curriculum in grades 6 & 7 and help us begin the process of developing new assessments for these grades.

This action does not affect any other areas of the curriculum or their corresponding assessments.

Sincerely,
Kathy Cox

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