Georgia Says 0.6% of Its Schools Are Good for Black Students. Texas Says 23%.
Only one of those states is telling parents the truth.
Here are two numbers from our data.
In Texas, 23% of schools earn an A for Black students — meaning 80% or more of their Black students pass state tests.
In Georgia, 0.6% do. Eleven schools out of 1,945.
The obvious conclusion is that Georgia is catastrophically failing Black children in a way Texas is not. That conclusion is wrong, and understanding why it’s wrong is more useful to a parent than either number by itself.
The honesty gap
Every state writes its own test and decides its own passing score. There is no national standard a state must meet. A state can make its test easier, watch proficiency rates climb, and report those numbers to parents as progress.
There is one independent check: the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP — the same test given to a sample of students in every state, often called the Nation’s Report Card. Because NAEP is identical everywhere, comparing a state’s own proficiency rate to its NAEP rate reveals how honest that state’s test is.
Education researchers call the difference the honesty gap.
In 2013, Georgia had the worst honesty gap in America. Its own test reported that 94% of fourth graders were proficient readers. NAEP put the real number around 34% — a 60-point discrepancy. Georgia’s proficiency standards were rated F, ranked last among all 50 states.
Then Georgia did something states rarely do. It threw out the old test, replaced it with Georgia Milestones, and raised the bar to something closer to what NAEP measures.
The gap collapsed from 60 points to roughly 3. According to Achieve, the independent organization that tracks this, it was the largest single reduction of any state in the country. Georgia’s rating went from an F to an A.
Meanwhile, in that same round of analysis, Education Week reported the finding plainly: “Texas was the biggest offender,” with gaps exceeding 40 points between its reported proficiency and NAEP’s.
What that means for these two numbers
Georgia’s 0.6% and Texas’s 23% are not measuring the same thing.
Georgia is measuring against a standard independently verified as one of the most rigorous in the country. Texas is measuring against a standard that outside researchers have repeatedly flagged as one of the least.
There is a version of this article that says Georgia is failing Black students five times worse than Texas. That version would be easy to write, would probably travel further, and would be wrong.
The honest version is harder and more uncomfortable: we don’t actually know which state is serving Black children better, because the two states are not using the same ruler. What we know is that Georgia is telling parents something closer to the truth about where their children stand.
What Georgia’s numbers actually show
Under Georgia’s stricter standard, here is the picture across 1,945 schools and 852,334 Black students:
The median Georgia school has 26.3% of its Black students proficient. The median school-wide rate is 35.4%.
Only 220 of 1,945 schools — 11.3% — have Black students performing at or above their school’s own average.
Those are hard numbers. Read against a rigorous standard, they describe a state where the typical Black child is not reading or doing math at grade level, and where nearly nine out of ten schools serve Black students worse than they serve everyone else.
The schools that clear the bar
Eleven Georgia schools have 80% or more of their Black students proficient. Against Georgia’s standard, these are genuinely exceptional.
Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science and Technology — 100% of its 122 Black students proficient, slightly above the school’s own average of 98.9%. Every Black student tested, proficient, at Georgia’s bar.
Kittredge Magnet School (DeKalb County) — 97.1%, 102 students Wadsworth Magnet School for High Achievers (DeKalb County) — 94.9%, with 569 Black students — proof it holds at real scale Britt David Magnet Academy (Muscogee County) — 94.4%, and Black students slightly above the school average Elite Scholars Academy (Clayton County) — 94.2%, 618 Black students
Elite Scholars deserves particular attention. Clayton County is a majority-Black district south of Atlanta whose median school has 19.6% of Black students proficient — among the lowest in metro Atlanta. Inside that district sits a school with 618 Black students performing at 94.2%.
DeKalb Early College Academy — 84.2%, and Black students outperform the school average by 2.6 points Davidson Fine Arts Magnet (Richmond County) — 81%, 400 Black students, in Augusta
Nearly all are magnets or early colleges with selective admission. That’s a real limitation — selection is not the same as instruction. But it doesn’t erase the finding, because these schools demonstrate that Black students clear Georgia’s rigorous bar in large numbers when placed in the right environment.
Metro Atlanta, district by district
Atlanta’s reputation as a center of Black achievement is real and earned. Its school data is more complicated.
District Schools Median Black proficiency Median gap Black students Gwinnett County 137 41.3% −2.4 80,913 Fulton County 101 39.3% −4.1 48,064 Cobb County 106 38.0% −7.5 43,019 Douglas County 34 30.6% −2.1 21,311 Rockdale County 18 26.1% −0.9 14,688 Henry County 52 25.8% −2.2 39,916 DeKalb County 121 23.5% −1.1 69,178 Atlanta Public Schools 85 21.7% −1.0 48,695 Clayton County 64 19.6% −1.4 47,746 Newton County 22 19.2% −2.5 16,418
Two things jump out.
Atlanta Public Schools ranks near the bottom of metro Atlanta for Black student proficiency, at 21.7%. The district at the heart of Black Atlanta’s civic identity, in the city that produced Morehouse and Spelman, has a median school where roughly one in five Black students is proficient.
Cobb County has the widest median gap in metro Atlanta at 7.5 points. Cobb’s schools perform better overall than Clayton’s or DeKalb’s — but Black students there fall further behind their own classmates than in any other large metro district. A strong district is not the same as an equitable one.
The gaps that hide inside good schools
The widest gaps in Georgia are not at struggling schools. They’re at schools that look excellent.
Oglethorpe Point Elementary (Glynn County) — 73.1% school-wide, 24.7% for Black students. A 48.4-point gap.
Daves Creek Elementary (Forsyth County) — 87% school-wide, 44.1% for Black students. 42.9 points. Forsyth County is one of Georgia’s wealthiest districts, with a documented history as a sundown county that expelled its entire Black population in 1912.
Roswell North Elementary (Fulton County) — 74.2% overall, 32.4% for Black students. 41.8 points.
Vanderlyn Elementary (DeKalb County) — 72.2% overall, 31.5% for Black students. 40.7 points.
Beacon Hill Middle (City Schools of Decatur) — 75.8% overall, 38.3% for Black students, with 598 Black students tested. 37.5 points. Decatur markets itself as one of the most progressive school communities in Georgia.
If you looked only at these schools’ overall ratings, you would conclude they’re excellent. For Black children, four of five are not.
What to take from this
For Georgia parents: your state is being more honest with you than most. That’s a real asset, and it means the numbers you see deserve to be taken seriously rather than explained away. It also means a school rated “good” overall can still be one of the worst in the state for your child — check the specific number.
For Texas parents: your state’s proficiency bar has been independently flagged as one of the least demanding in the country. When Texas reports that your child is passing, that is worth less than the same word from Georgia. It does not mean your child is on grade level by national standards.
For everyone: stop comparing states. The comparison that matters is the one inside a single building — how Black students perform relative to their own classmates, taught by the same teachers, under the same principal, on the same test.
That number can’t be inflated by a state’s choice of cut score. It’s the same ruler on both sides.
In Georgia, 88.7% of schools fail it.
Data source: Georgia Governor’s Office of Student Achievement, Milestones 2024–25, End-of-Grade and End-of-Course combined. Proficiency means scoring Proficient or Distinguished. Honesty gap findings from Achieve and the Collaborative for Student Success, as reported by Education Week and confirmed by GOSA. Analysis covers schools with 25 or more Black students tested, excluding alternative and treatment programs. Search any Georgia school at bearinglight.org.