Milton test scores, school by school

Fulton County put out its Georgia Milestones results last week and the county did well. What the county did not put out is how any single school did, and a district that runs from Milton down through south Fulton can post an average that describes almost nobody.

So we went and got the school-level file the state publishes, and pulled ours. Here is how Milton's two high schools did on last spring's end-of-course tests, against the county and the state. Every figure is the share of students who scored proficient or better.

	Milton	Cambridge	Fulton	Georgia
Algebra	68.7%	70.0%	60.6%	48.1%
Biology	78.5%	75.9%	59.8%	47.3%
US History	43.7%	57.7%	45.5%	38.7%
Literature	no scores anywhere in Georgia

Algebra and biology are the story you would hope for. Milton High finished thirty-one points clear of the state in biology, Cambridge is close behind, and both sit well above the county in both subjects.

US History is a different story. Milton High came in at 43.7 percent, below the Fulton County average of 45.5 and fourteen points behind Cambridge. Same district, same year, same test, same building that just cleared the state by thirty-one points in biology.

We are not going to guess at why from a spreadsheet. One year of one test is a data point, not a verdict, and 268 students sat for it. We are asking Fulton County Schools about it and we will print their answer.

Two things to hold alongside that. Northwestern and Hopewell turn up in the algebra file at 97.7 and 99.4 percent, but those are middle schoolers taking a high school course, a self-selected accelerated group, so it is not a whole-school number and we are not going to dress it up as one. And end-of-course means high school. Grades 3 through 8 sit in a separate state file that covers Crabapple Crossing, Birmingham Falls, Summit Hill, and the regular results for Northwestern and Hopewell. We are pulling that one now. It runs Thursday.

For the county picture the district did announce: math proficiency reached 57.5 percent, up 2.5 points; science 55.8; social studies 49.4. "While we are proud of the progress our students have made, we also know there is more work to do," Superintendent Mike Looney said.

Which leaves the subject nobody reported, because there is nothing to report.

Georgia has no reading scores this year. Open the state's own dashboard, set it to third grade English language arts for spring 2026, and you get 122,192 students tested and then three empty boxes where the average, the spread and the achievement levels belong. The children took the test. Nobody has a score. The high school file says the same thing in its own way: Literature and Composition II is blank for all 512 high schools in Georgia, Milton High included.

This one is not Fulton's doing. The state rewrote its ELA content standards, and a rewritten standard has to go through a fresh standard-setting process before any number means anything. The Department of Education says those results "will be available in late fall 2026." So how Milton's kids are reading is a question with a four-month wait on it, for everyone.

Sources: Fulton County Schools and the Georgia Department of Education 2025-26 end-of-course school-level file. Percentages are the share of students scoring Proficient Learner or Distinguished Learner. County and state figures are weighted by the number of students tested.