Cartersville City Schools students in elementary and middle grades outperformed their Georgia peers in the five subject areas of the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests.

The Georgia Department of Education on Thursday released 2012 school-level  CRCT results, which shows the percentages of Bartow County schools students who either met or exceeded standards was generally less than those of their city counterparts.

While Cartersville third- through eighth-graders exceeded the state average in every CRCT category, county schools came in below Georgia schools in elementary social studies and middle school math, science and English-language arts.

Some of the highlights from schools in Cartersville and Bartow are:

• 100 percent of Cloverleaf Elementary fifth-graders and Taylorsville third-graders met or exceeded standards in English-language arts.
• 100 percent of Cartersville Middle eighth-graders met or exceeded standards in reading.
• Generally, fewer county school students met or exceeded standards in social studies than in the state and city of Cartersville.
• Nearly 69 percent of Bartow eighth graders met or exceeded standards in math compared to nearly 77 percent in Georgia and 88 percent of Cartersville middle school students.

The CRCT measures third- to eighth-grade students’ abilities in reading, English/language arts, math, science and social studies.

In order to advance to the next grade, students in third-grade must pass the reading portion of the exam while students in fifth- and eighth-grade must meet or exceed expectations in both reading and math.