Barrow schools need to focus on weak Math instruction

This isn’t a new issue. For several years, Barrow students have lagged other area students in Math achievement. That’s true at just about all grade levels, from elementary schools to high schools.

Last week, the state released last spring’s results on the End of Course Tests for all Georgia high school students. Once again, Barrow students had a much higher failure rate than other area schools in Math. In fact, Barrow students were overall in the bottom tier of all schools in the state in Math.

That’s important for several reasons. First, EOCT tests are assuming much more importance in public school evaluations since the state is getting rid of its high school graduation exam and replacing that with EOCT results.

Beyond that, such a low competency in Math in Barrow County public schools will hold the entire community back in the future. What business wants to locate in a community where math instruction is lacking?

If this were just one school or grade, the issue would be different. But it’s not. Across the board, Barrow has for several years been floundering at the bottom in its students’ Math testing in nearly all grades and all tests. That is a strong indication that there is a deep problem with the local school system’s Math curriculum and instruction.

How bad is this problem?

Over one-half, 54.2 percent, of Apalachee High School 9th Graders failed Math 1 EOCT last spring. That was 156 students out of 288 at AHS failing. The school was worse than other area high schools in the surrounding counties, including being worse than Clarke Central High School. Only Cedar Shoals in Clarke County was worse than AHS in 9th Grade Math in the area.

Winder-Barrow High School wasn’t much better with a 51.1 percent failure rate for 9th Graders in Math.

For Math 2, the results were similar. Some 46.3 percent of AHS students failed while over 64 percent — read that again, over 64 percent — of WBHS students failed the Math 2 section.

Although a lot of students struggled with Math in Georgia last year, Barrow’s test results were among the worst of the worst. Moreover, the trend isn’t promising. Overall, both local high schools had worse results last spring than their previous two EOCT Math tests from last fall and in the spring of 2010.

This problem isn’t caused because the state changed the math curriculum in the last few years. That affected all students, not just Barrow County.

Nor is this caused by an especially dumb group of kids. These students didn’t have that kind of extremely poor outcome in the other EOCT testing areas.

At AHS, students improved their scores last spring in literature, economics and history and were about the same in the two science tests. The same trend of improving in areas outside of math held true at WBHS as well.

So what does that tell us? It tells us that these kids are capable of learning, but they aren’t getting what they need from the school system when it comes to Math instruction.

It appears that the Barrow County School System was slow to respond a few years ago to the changes in the state’s math curriculum. The problems in the 9th Grade Math 1, for example, reflect a lack of preparedness of students coming out of middle school. Math is a discipline that builds; get behind in the early years and it continues to show up into high school.

The exact cause of this problem isn’t clear. It could be that the system is using the wrong textbooks, or it has structured its Math curriculum wrong, or perhaps local teachers haven’t had enough training.

The school system is very aware of this problem and has in recent years attempted to fix it. But whatever they’re doing hasn’t worked. Barrow’s Math curriculum needs to be shaken up, whatever it takes.

Barrow students aren’t dumber in Math than all the surrounding counties. The school system simply isn’t using the right tools to teach Math.

There is no reason — and no excuse — that half or more of Barrow County’s students failed the Math sections of last spring’s EOCT.

That kind of poor showing is an embarrassment for the entire county.

Mike Buffington is co-publisher of the Barrow Journal. He can be reached at mike@mainstreetnews.com.