Paulding Juniors Fare Well on Graduation Tests

More than 75 percent of rising seniors in Paulding County Schools’ five high schools won’t have to worry about retaking parts of the Georgia High School Graduation Tests in the coming months.

The Georgia Department of Education recently released school-level results on the spring administration of the GHSGT. These results include only 11th-grade first-time test takers.

State education officials say that statewide results show that student scores increased in science, social studies and English language arts—content areas that had comparable data from the year before. This was the first year the math exam was based on the Georgia Performance Standards curriculum, so there is no historical data from which to draw year-to-year comparisons.

Paulding County High had the highest percentage of students pass all four exams at 78.4 percent, followed closely by North Paulding at 77.9. Hiram had a 75-percent rate, while South Paulding and East Paulding came in at 74.7 and 74.1, respectively. The system’s pass rate on all exams was 75.9 percent.

On individual exams, the district saw the highest pass rates on the science exam, with juniors at East, North and South Paulding each notching a 95-percent pass rate, though Hiram and Paulding County were right with the pack at 94 and 93 percent, respectively. Statewide, 93 percent of juniors passed the exam, which represented an increase of 3 percentage points from the previous year.

The next highest rates were seen on the English language arts exam, with North Paulding and Paulding County High topping the list at 94 percent, though the other three schools were within 2 percentage points. Those rates were all good enough to surpass the state’s pass rate of 91 percent, an increase of 1 percentage point from 2010.

East Paulding led the way on the math exam, as 89 percent of its junior test-takers passed the test on the first attempt. Eighty-seven percent of Paulding County pupils hit the mark the first time, followed by Hiram at 86 percent, North Paulding at 85 percent and South Paulding at 84 percent. Those results put the schools above or on par with the state, as 84 percent of all test-takers passed—that rate, state officials said, represented an expected dip from the previous year’s Quality Core Curriculum-based test, which had a 91-percent first-time pass rate.

The seemingly toughest exam to pass in the district and across the state was the social studies test, with the highest first-time pass rate recorded at North Paulding at 86 percent. South Paulding and Paulding County had 84 percent of their students get past the test, while Hiram and East Paulding recorded pass rates of 81 and 79 percent, respectively. The statewide pass rate was 80 percent—2 percentage points higher than the year previous.

The GHSGT are given to high school students for the first time in the spring of their junior year. All four portions of the test, plus the Georgia High School Writing Test, must be passed in order for a student to receive a full diploma from a Georgia public high school. Students can retake the GHSGT as many times as needed to pass the exams.

Since 2005, the state has been implementing the Georgia Performance Standards, a more rigorous and focused curriculum in the core areas of mathematics, English language arts, social studies and science. As the curriculum is phased in, the state's tests are being aligned to match the GPS.

Students entering high school this fall will not be required to take the GHSGT, as the State Board of Education in April approved Superintendent John Barge’s recommendation to phase out the tests. Those entering freshmen will see their End-of-Course Test scores count as 20 percent of their final grade, rather than the current 15-percent weight.

We’ll be getting in touch with Paulding County Schools leaders to get their reactions to the recent GHSGT scores.