Stephen’s Untold Stories

What’s up, doc?

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Saw a bunch of them on Springer Mountain. Please leave a comment if you know.

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I took a trip up to Springer Mountain, which is the southern terminus for the Appalachian Trail. The weather was perfect!

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A little over a month ago the city of Macon was hit hard by a tornado. Macon State College suffered a lot of damage, but the cleanup has gone well. Here are some before and after photos.

Note: It looks like their site is down fro a while. Hopefully it will be back soon.

More photos here.

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Somebody help me out here. Has this ever happened before in Georgia? This is from a letter written by the state superintendent.

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.

Link to official statement

At around six o’clock today it started to sound like someone was throwing rocks at the house. I looked outside and saw hailstones crushing everything in sight. I decided to take a prisoner.

Note: Actual golf balls were not falling from the sky. Just hail.

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We got to spend a little time at Tybee yesterday. It’s grown up a lot since I moved from that area.

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I got lucky with the lighting here.

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I got to take a few shots around Monterey Square.

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I’m in Savannah for a few days, and I managed to get out to the entrance of Wormsloe Plantation. It was closed, but I still got a couple of decent shots through the gate.

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A Georgia man has made an amazing mini replica of the Alamo.

Story and more pictures here!

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Who knew the guys down on North Avenue were so talented?

 

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The Atlanta Hawks won their first playoff game in nine years last night. Josh Smith was amazing.

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Another example of improvement. As always, we have a long way to go but it is still nice to be able to report progress.

Georgia’s 8th graders are scoring at the national average in writing, according to test results released Thursday.

The results of the 2007 National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) showed that 88 percent of Georgia 8th graders scored at or above basic proficiency levels, one point higher than the nation. This was a six-point jump for Georgia since 2002, the last time the NAEP writing test was given.

“These NAEP results offer further proof that our new curriculum is making a big difference,” said State Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox. “There is no doubt in my mind that the rigor and focus of our new standards is having a positive impact in the classroom.”

The NAEP is given to a representative sample of students in every state. Scores are on a scale of 0 to 300 and are broken into four categories — below basic, basic, proficient and advanced. Georgia students in grade 8 took the NAEP writing exam last school year. The students who were tested had been taught using the state’s new Reading/English Language Arts curriculum for two years.

Georgia’s 8th graders scored a 153, up six points from 2002. Georgia’s score was one point lower than the nation (154) and one point higher than other southern states (152). But just like a public opinion poll, there is a margin of error, which makes these scores statistically equal.

Georgia’s African-American and Hispanic students made significant gains on the NAEP writing test.

The scale score for Georgia’s African-American students rose to 144, a jump of six points since 2002 and four points higher than the national average (140) for African-American students.

Hispanic students in Georgia scored 142 on the NAEP writing test, an increase of 31 points from 2002 and one point higher than the national average (141) for Hispanic students.

Link to article

I’ve never met Dr. Melvyn Fein, but I’d like to buy him lunch sometime.

The university in which I work has been underfunded for years by the Board of Regents. Our current governor hasn’t been much help at all regarding the entire university system. Dr. Fein weighs in.

As the world has come to learn, Georgia is on the cutting edge of what the United States is becoming. It is leading the way into a new millennium based on innovation, vision and social justice.

But in order to sustain these advances, Georgia requires a university system commensurate with its emerging greatness. Its people must thus support the colleges they have hitherto created and must strengthen them further. Only by moving in this direction can they establish the conditions necessary for sustained economic and social growth.

Unfortunately, Sonny Perdue has not been a higher education governor. The data shows that under his aegis, the university system has been allowed to languish, and indeed to drift backwards. Adequate classrooms have not been built, sufficient faculty members have not been hired, and research has been seriously under-funded.

Nor has the Board of Regents been a statewide board. With its eyes fixed elsewhere, the needs of northwest Georgia have been sadly neglected. Despite our area serving as the primary engine of regional progress, our schools have received less attention than more politically demanding constituencies.

Kennesaw State University, in particular, has been allowed to suffer.

Although it has grown into the state’s third-largest university, it has been asked to function on a budget more suitable for a junior high school. Allocated less money per student than almost every other school in the system, it cannot offer its attendees the courses they deserve because it has neither the space nor the person-power to do so.

Here is the entire letter.

I took a drive over to Rome today and got some nice shots of this hawk.

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18 of the top 100 fastest-growing counties in the U.S. are in Georgia. Ya’ll bring your own water with you!

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We don’t get to toot our horn in GA as much as some other states regarding test scores, but here is one area that is worth mentioning.

More Georgia students than ever are taking rigorous Advanced Placement (AP) classes and scoring well on the AP exams, according to a national report released today.

“Georgia is a national leader in improving AP access and success,” said State Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox. “Our students are showing the state and the country that they want to be challenged and that they are up to the task.”

“Once again, Georgia students continue to shine when compared with the rest of the nation in AP participation and performance on AP exams,” said Governor Sonny Perdue. “Georgia’s global competitiveness depends on setting high expectations for our students. These rankings demonstrate that in Georgia, AP courses are not just for the top two percent of students, but are accessible to the majority.”

The Annual “AP Report to the Nation,” released by the College Board Wednesday, also shows that Georgia has one of the highest rates of participation among minority students.

“Georgia has made a commitment to making sure every student has access to AP classes,” Superintendent Cox said. “Working with the legislature, we are increasing AP teacher training, paying for students to take AP exams and offering more AP classes through our Georgia Virtual School. This is having a big impact.”

Advanced Placement classes and exams are administered by the College Board and offer rigorous college-level learning options to students in high school. Students who receive a 3, 4 or 5 on AP exams may receive college credit. More than 43,000 public school students took at least one AP exam in 2006-2007, a 14.4 percent increase over the previous school year. Since 2003, the number of students taking at least one AP exam has jumped nearly 84 percent.

Georgia students took a total of 67,739 AP exams in 2006-2007, an increase of over 8,000 exams from the previous year. Since 2003, the number of exams taken has almost doubled. Despite the dramatic growth in participation, the percentage of exams receiving a score of 3 or higher has remained fairly steady, between 53 and 57 percent.

For the first time this year, the College Board has released a new statistic for AP: The percentage of seniors that scored a 3 or higher on an AP exam during their high school years. The College Board reports that 15.3 percent of Georgia’s 2007 High School Seniors got a 3, 4 or 5 on at least one AP exam during their high school years. That puts Georgia at 15th in the nation.

Also, the report shows that 9.4 percent of Georgia’s African-American high school seniors scored a 3 or higher on at least one AP exam. This was third highest in the nation. While Georgia continues to see strong growth in participation, there are still many students who are not taking advantage of AP classes. The College Board report shows that thousands of Georgia students that could successfully take AP classes are not doing so.

“What the report shows is that we have many more students who are capable of college-level work while still in high school,” Superintendent Cox said. “We have to help our schools recruit these students into the challenge of an AP program.”

Official Announcement Here