Summer vacation plans will be on hold for thousands of middle school students across Georgia.

Preliminary CRCT results have begun trickling into school systems across the area and the results are less than cum lade.

Michael Johnson is the principal at Evans Middle School. He spent most of Tuesday morning stuffing and licking envelops.

"We're mailing out letters today to those parents, letting them know their child did not meet the standard," he said.

Figures just released from the Georgia Department of Education show 40 percent of all 8th graders did not pass the math portion of the CRCT,
27 percent failed it in Columbia County. That means remediation classes and a retest in June or face repeating 8th grade.

"I knew across the state the scores would dip a little but, but I didn't think they would dip this substantially," Johnson said.

And the news only gets worse for the social studies portion of the test. NBC Augusta has learned only 20 to 30 percent of students across the state passed. It's a sobering and scary statistic for parents.

"It's shocking, it's disheartening and it goes to what I say. They're teaching these students how to take a test, not how to learn," Kimberly Ayers said.

"When I saw our numbers, I was shocked," said Charles Nagle, Columbia County Superintendent.

Nagle says a new and more rigorous, state-mandated curriculum may be to blame for the lower scores and his teachers agree.

"There's a true disconnect with what is being taught and the standards that are to be met," Nagle said.

"With a new rigorous curriculum, I really doubt some adults could take this test and pass it," Johnson said.

School leaders in Columbia County tell NBC Augusta if your child did not pass a portion of the test, you will be notified in the next few days.

Superintendent Nagle says he'll be forced to hire 12 teachers to teach CRCT remediation classes this summer.

A retest for students who failed is scheduled for June 23 and 24.