Each year, students prepare to take an exam that measures how much a student has learned throughout the entire school year and determines if the child will advance to the next grade. This exam is called the Georgia Milestones. The question is: How accurately do they truly represent a student’s outcome and success?
What are the Georgia Milestones?
The Georgia Milestones Assessment System is a standardized testing program used in Georgia for students spanning from 3rd grade to high school.
The tests were established in the 2014-2015 school year and replaced a former state assessment, the Criterion Referenced Competency Test (CRCT). The previous exam mostly consisted of multiple choice questions, but the Milestones exams were created to be more rigorous and comprehensive, adding open-ended, written, and critical thinking questions.
In grades 3-8, students take what are called End-of-Grade assessments, which include the subjects Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, & Social Studies. There are four achievement level descriptors outlined in Georgia’s content standards that are used to assess student learning for each of the exams.
According to The Governor’s Office of Student Achievement’s website, the first is beginner learners, who are considered “not yet demonstrating proficiency in the knowledge and skills necessary at this grade level/course of learning.”
The second are developing learners, who are considered “demonstrating partial proficiency in the knowledge and skills necessary at this grade level/course of learning.”
The third are proficient learners, which are considered “demonstrating proficiency in the knowledge and skills necessary at this grade level/course of learning.”
The fourth are distinguished learners, who are considered “demonstrating advanced proficiency in the knowledge and skills necessary at this grade level/course of learning.”
What role do these play in measuring student success and outcomes?
According to the Georgia Department of Education, the Milestones intend to be a summative exam taken at the end of the school year to measure what students knowledge and skills students should have learned by the end of the school year. The students are supposed to have met certain standards for each subject, and the test is to see if they can perform sufficiently well on questions aligned with those academic expectations.
The goal of the Milestones is for students, no matter where they’re located in Georgia, have all learned the same thing and are set up for the same opportunities. The tests also determine if students are on track for the next grade level.
For End-of-Grade assessments in 3rd through 8th grade, the Georgia Milestones can play a role in promotion or retention decisions, essentially determining whether a student is ready to advance to the next grade level. For eighth graders specifically, their scores may also influence high school course placement, including eligibility for honors or accelerated classes.
Although the Milestones’ goal is expected to be a positive thing, as it challenges students academically and shows school administrators where their students are at, there are some challenges with the exam, said Dr. Karyn Allee, an Assistant Professor at Mercer’s Tift College of Education.
“So for a long time now, not just in Georgia with the Milestones, but nationally, there have been concerns about how the tests are designed and the outcomes that are disproportionately negative for groups of students, by race, by income, and by disability status,” Allee explains.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress or NEAP primarily tracks student performance and educational experiences in core subjects.
“There have been some improvements in outcomes, but the gaps between groups of black and brown children or lower income or high poverty children or students with disabilities, between their differently grouped peers, their more affluent peers, or their non-disabled peers, have been persistent and predictable,” Allee said. “So those gaps remain.”
She said another concern is how easily stress can impact a student’s ability to do well on the test. Even if a student does well in their classes throughout the entire school year, if they don’t do well on the Milestones because they were too stressed out or were having a bad day, it could impact them greatly. It could impact the future classes they can take or even prevent them from advancing to the next grade.
“Kids are still developing executive functions, which are those critical prefrontal cortex skills of the brain that affect how well we can organize ourselves, our materials, our tasks, our attention, how much we can focus on any one thing our working memory,” Allee said.
Allee says this function is what lets us hold multiple pieces of information or directions or steps and solve a complex problem in our memory.
“All of these prefrontal cortex skills are developing throughout childhood and then, to some extent, throughout the lifespan, but they’re not fully developed yet,” Allee describes. “And so it can be really difficult to manage what has become increasingly stressful and high stakes because of the potential outcomes with less than fully mature prefrontal cortex or executive function skills and high stakes assessments can really increase student anxiety and reduce intrinsic motivation.”
How do Milestones fit in with the strategic waiver?
The Strategic Waiver School System (SWSS) is a contract implemented in Bibb County and other school districts that permits these districts to waive specific state rules, such as class sizes and teacher certification requirements in exchange for showing improvement on assessments like the Milestones. Each district has a unique contract that spells out what it can waive and what improvements it will show.
According to the Rules and Regulations of the State of Georgia, “the goal for each system waiver shall be the improvement of student performance.” Since the waiver impacts how students are taught, it also can impact how students perform on the Milestones exam. Following the establishment of the waiver in Bibb County schools in July 2015, the school district has seen some improvement, specifically in 2024, but it ranges in subjects.
The state tracks Milestones data for End-of-Grade from grades 3rd to 8th. We looked specifically at 8th-grade achievement level descriptors for the ELA and Mathematics sections.
The tables show data from the 8th-grade Milestones in Bibb County before the waiver, a few years after, and the most recent data in 2024. There has been more improvement in the ELA section than in the Mathematics section. The percentage of beginner learners is higher than it could be, and the percentage of distinguished learners is also lower.
Even though the district has seen some progress since the waiver, Bibb County’s proficiency rates still fall below the state averages. For example, the percentage of beginner learners for the ELA section in Bibb County in 2024 was 30.6%, whereas the average of Georgia’s was 21.4%. The percentage of distinguished learners was 4.1%, whereas the average of Georgia’s was 13.1%.
Bibb’s current waiver expires on June 30.
