CRCT

The result of looping on the Georgia Criterion-Referenced Competency Test (CRCT) in one urban middle school



The result of looping on the Georgia Criterion-Referenced Competency Test (CRCT) in one urban middle school

Introduction

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) re-authorizes the ESEA of 1965. It specifically mandates that schools and school districts work to improve student achievement on standardized examinations so that all students reach academic proficiency by 2014. The statement of purpose for NCLB says that all students will reach “at a minimum, proficiency on challenging state academic achievement standards and state academic assessments… by… meeting the educational needs of low-achieving children in our Nation's highest-poverty schools” (Livingston, 2008). The focus on high-poverty schools is an extension of the original ESEA of 1965 and makes clear that Title I funding to schools and school districts should specifically target students from low-income families.

With such extensive policy attention given to efforts to close the achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students, we would hope that the gap has diminished or at least has not grown(White, et al ., 2006 ). Indeed, maintaining an achievement gap is the educational system's form of classism. It sends the message that educators and policy makers believe that poor kids cannot learn, that they cannot perform as well as their more advantaged peers. Many would find it illogical to think that family income is in any way related to the quality of a student's mind.

Discussion

The purpose of this paper is to analyze data from one state, Georgia, to learn whether such an illogical gap has persisted during the NCLB years. Given the amount of attention the country has given this issue for over forty years, we might expect to see that socio-economic status becomes less of a predictor of student achievement(Coleman, et al., 2006). This study explores the relationship between the socio-economic status of students and their achievement on federally-mandated standardized tests. Specifically, this study compares the aggregate socio-economic status of schools in Georgia to the aggregate achievement of students within the school.

Caldas & Bankston (1997) also draw a distinction between school-level and individual-level SES. They studied the effect of school-wide SES on individual academic achievement and hypothesize that the poverty status of the peer population of a school affects the performance of individuals within the school despite their own poverty status(Marzano , et al., 2007). They found that high-poverty students, as indicated by ...