This year's top schools in the state are Kittredge Magnet Elementary in DeKalb County, Dickerson Middle in Cobb County and Davidson Magnet High School in Richmond County. Sewell Middle School and Bremen High School, both part of the Bremen School System ranked as top five schools in the Northwest Georgia Region. Sewell Middle ranked second out of the top five middle schools and Bremen High ranked number one in the region. To enable parents to measure the improvement each school has made over the past year, this year's reports include a comparison of this year's test scores with last year's test scores. Hopefully, based on this information, schools can act now to improve so that we can limit the number of failing schools once the accountability program is fully implemented in two years.
Poverty can and often does play a big role in a school's performance.
For this reason, the Report Cards include two additional parts. The first is the percentage of students in each school who qualify for the federal free or reduced-price lunch program. The second is a poverty index that compares each school's predicated test scores based on its poverty rate to its actual test scores. While test scores dictate the ratings for Georgia public schools, there are many unique aspects of each school that may go unrecognized. The new platform, which was launched Thursday, Nov. 16, will allow parents to provide comments and feedback on their child's school experience.