State Ed Board to approve new social studies curriculum

Today, the state school board is expected to approve a new curriculum for social studies. Education officials hope the revisions will help turn-the-tide on the more than 70-percent failure rate of 6th and 7th graders last year. Over the summer, on-line public comment was taken on the proposed update. Dana Tofig with the Department of Education:

"Some people may say, 'well, the school year has begun and how can you introduce new standards when the school year has begun?'. These standards aren't so radically different. It's a lot of the same material covered in the 6th and 7th grade before...it's just a little more precise".

Training on the new material for teachers begins later this month.

Meanwhile, numbers in from summer re-testing on the math portion of the CRCT show another 19,000 rising high school freshmen passed. That improved the statewide pass-rate from 62, to 77-percent for the year.

Positives in national education study includes Georgia

Georgia along with other states is showing improved student achievement in a new national report. But there might be a catch.

The study was put together by the non-profit Center for Education Policy. It analyzed five years of data from state test scores in reading and math.

Jack Jennings is president of the education policy center. He says there’s good news to report from the data since 2002, when the No Child Left Behind Act was signed into law.

"Reading and math achievement on state tests has gone up in most states. And there are larger gains on the elementary and middle levels than there are on the high school levels. And there are larger gains in math than there are in reading".

Those math gains were reflected in Georgia numbers, showing moderate to large increases.

However, that was before the recently toughened curriculum standards in math. The latest state-mandated testing showed nearly 40-percent of 8th graders failed. School officials stand-by the more rigorous standards.