Dougherty classrooms post elite gains in system; fewer than 400 schools qualify statewide

ALBANY — In a state with nearly 2,400 public schools, fewer than one in five earns recognition each year for exceptional academic growth or achievement in math and literacy — a benchmark that puts the latest gains in Dougherty County Schools into sharper focus.

During a visit Friday to Robert A. Cross Middle Magnet School, Georgia State School Superintendent Richard Woods formally recognized several district schools as leaders under the Georgia Department of Education’s Math and Literacy initiative, a program that rewards either high proficiency or significant year-over-year growth on the Georgia Milestones Assessment System.

“This past year, we only had a little over 400 schools receive recognition in math and a little over 400 in literacy,” Woods said. “And we have close to 2,400 schools in the state of Georgia. So you can see how selective this is.” 

The designation is not awarded at the school level, but by individual grade and subject, making the threshold even narrower. In many cases, only a single grade within a school qualifies.

At its core, the state’s model hinges on growth, but not in abstract terms. Georgia applies a tiered accountability system that requires larger gains from lower-performing groups:

• Schools with a 0–49% passage rate must show at least 15 percentage points of growth;
• 50–69% must gain 10 points;
• 70–89% must gain 5 points;
• 90% and above must still demonstrate at least 3 points of growth.

“We may not be where we want to be,” Woods said. “But as long as we see that we are progressing to that destination, that is worth celebrating.” 

Even so, growth alone is not the endpoint, the state superintendent said.

“Growth is great, but proficiency is the promised land,” Woods said, defining that benchmark as a 90% passage rate on state assessments. 

In Dougherty County, several schools met or exceeded those expectations, posting measurable gains in literacy across elementary grade levels:

• Radium Springs Elementary recorded 18.7 points of growth in third-grade literacy;
• Robert H. Harvey Elementary posted 14.1 points of growth in the same grade;
• Lincoln Magnet Elementary saw gains across multiple grades — 6.9 points in third, 8.9 in fourth, and 5.5 in fifth;
• Lamar Reese School of the Arts achieved 15.9 points of growth in literacy.

At the middle school level, performance at Robert A. Cross reflected not just growth, but near-universal mastery:

• 100% passage rate in math on the high school-level assessment.
• Literacy passage rates of 96.8% (sixth grade), 97.5% (seventh), and 98.1% (eighth).

Those figures place the school well above the state’s proficiency benchmark and into the range that qualifies for the program’s highest distinction. For district leaders, those outcomes are the result of a system built around continuous measurement and targeted instruction for both students and teachers, rather than assumptions based on a single end-of-year test.

“The data drives everything that we do,” Thelma Chunn, the associate superintendent for district effectiveness, said. “We provide targeted professional learning based on the data and the needs that our schools have.” 

That includes frequent formative assessments throughout the year to track student progress in real time.

“We’re constantly assessing … taking short tests to see what growth or changes we need to make,” Christopher Sharpe, the principal of Robert A. Cross Middle Magnet School, said. 

The approach also emphasizes student engagement as a measurable driver of outcomes.

“It’s not just the teachers teaching, but our students connecting,” Sharpe said. “They are engaged in every classroom.” 

The gains carry added weight in a district where poverty rates and external barriers are well documented — factors Woods acknowledged, but framed as conditions to overcome rather than excuses.

“This is a Title I district in many ways … those are challenges,” he said. “But we don’t make excuses. We just know we have to work a little bit harder so that those kids can succeed.” 

District leaders echoed that approach, pointing to a “whole child” model that extends beyond academics to include social and emotional support, family engagement and basic needs.

“If you’re always focused on the problem and not the solution, you’re never going to move them,” Chunn said. 

While Georgia directs additional funding to high-poverty districts through state formulas and federal programs like Title I, non-academic barriers such as poverty are not factored into how academic growth or achievement is measured. 

Under the Georgia Milestones Assessment System and the state’s accountability model, all schools are held to the same performance benchmarks, with growth expectations scaled only to prior test scores — not socioeconomic conditions. This means districts like Dougherty County, where poverty rates are significantly higher than the state average, are evaluated on identical standards as more affluent systems.

Under a system that holds all districts to the same benchmarks regardless of economic conditions, the gains posted by Title I systems like Dougherty County stand out all the more as improvement achieved against steeper odds.

For Woods, the recognition is meant to signal more than a single year of performance. He compared the banners to championship titles — markers of sustained success — suggesting that gains achieved in one year are not isolated, but evidence of systems and instruction strong enough to carry progress forward.

“From an academic standpoint, these are our state championship banners,” he said. “And we want to make sure that we add multiple state championships.” 

In a system where hundreds of schools fall short of the threshold each year, the distinction places Dougherty County’s highest-performing classrooms in a relatively small group statewide, and underscores a broader shift toward measuring not just where students are, but how far they’ve come.