Baldwin County School District receives its report card

There are 180 school systems in Georgia – 159 "county" systems and 21 "city" systems.

Out of the 180, the Baldwin County School District consistently finished around the bottom 10 percent in many of the key measurements in the results of the recently released College & Career Ready Performance Index, an initiative administered by the Georgia Department of Education.

Perhaps most alarming is the fact that the overwhelming majority of school districts that finished in Baldwin County's neighborhood, down around the bottom, were much smaller school districts in very rural counties.  Below is a look at Content Mastery at the "Elementary School" level. The Content Mastery score largely is derived from the Georgia Milestones Test, which is an end-of-course standardized test in four subjects – English/Language Arts, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies. Here's a look at the bottom 10 percent in "Elementary Content Mastery," with the number in parentheses representing the number of students in the district, at least according to the DOE's most recent FTE "head count" back in October:

• 180. Hancock County (671 students)
• 179. Talbot County (390 students)
• 178. Quitman County (322 students)
• 177. Dooly County (1,113 students)
• 176. Baker County (296 students)
• 175. Evans County (1,798 students)
• 174. Macon County (1,099 students)
• 173. Sumter County (3,667 students)
• 172. Taliaferro County (184 students)
• 171. Calhoun County (439 students)
• 170. Stewart County (364 students)
• 169. Wilkinson County (1,076 students)
• 168. Crisp County (3,442 students)
• 167. Warren County (646 students)
• 166. Richmond County (29,384 students)
• 165. Baldwin County (4,588 students)
• 164. Clayton County (50,832 students)
• 163. Meriwether County (2,255 students)

There are 79 school districts in Georgia with at least 4,000 students. Out of those 79, the Baldwin County School District finished 78th in "Elementary School Content Mastery," trailing only the Richmond County School District.

Another component of the CCRPI is "Readiness," which is defined as measuring "whether students are participating in activities preparing them for and demonstrating readiness for the next level, college, or career...The indicators for elementary and middle schools include literacy, student attendance, and beyond the core," according to the Georgia DOE. In terms of "Readiness," the BCSD finished in 155th place at the elementary level, which equates to the 14th percentile. 

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The Georgia DOE has a really nifty and interactive webpage for its 2023 CCRPI results, which can be accessed by CLICKING HERE. Once there, click on the "VIEW STATE REPORTS" green icon and then scroll down roughly halfway on the next webpage to play with the results.

Moving on to the "Middle School" level, the BCSD finished 163rd out of 180 in Content Mastery, which is the 10th percentile. In terms of the Georgia school districts with at least 4,000 students, this ranked 77th out of 79. "Readiness" at the middle school level was most dismal, with the BCSD finishing 169th out of 180, which equates to the 6th percentile. This once again ranked 77th out of 79, in terms of school districts with at least 4,000 students.

The only bright spot in the rankings, very relatively speaking, was Baldwin High School.  In  Content Mastery, the BCSD finished 130th out of 180 at the high school level, which is the 28th percentile. In "Readiness," the BCSD finished in 137th place (the 24th percentile) at the high school level. "High school (Readiness) indicators include literacy, student attendance, accelerated enrollment, pathway completion, and college and career readiness," according to the DOE.

According to the CCRPI data, African-American students in Baldwin County are most likely to fall behind. In terms of the different subgroups assigned by the DOE, the "Hispanic" subgroup actually scored higher in English/Language Arts than the "Black" subgroup at both the elementary and middle school levels here in Baldwin County. "Hispanic" elementary school students in Baldwin County were roughly 50 percent more likely to be proficient in "English/Language Arts" than "Black" students, according to the data.

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