Eighth-graders in the Griffin-Spalding County School System showed slight improvement in the annual writing test that is designed specifically for them.

Seventy-five percent of the local students met or exceeded standards in the 2011 Eighth Grade Writing Assessment, a state-mandated assessment administered to all eighth-graders in Georgia each year.

While this outcome puts Griffin-Spalding students seven percentage points below this year’s state average, it shows some progress compared to the 2010 writing assessment, in which 74 percent of local eighth-graders met or exceeded standards.

“We expected better than that,” said Middle School Curriculum Director Cynthia Anderson about this year’s results. “Any kind of improvement is good. You don’t want to regress. But one percent is the minimum improvement.”

The Eighth Grade Writing Assessment is designed to evaluate the writing abilities of students. During the testing session, students are given two writing prompts and are expected to respond to them.

Students who did not meet standards this year will not face punitive consequences, such as having to repeat eighth grade, Anderson said.

However, failure to meet standards might suggest “deficits in English and language arts that we need to address,” she said.