ATLANTA -- State Schools Superintendent Kathy Cox put out a news release Monday on some sobering news for Georgia students.

The official results are not in, but according to a news release 40 percent of eighth-grade students in Georgia did not pass the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test (CRCT) in math.

The stakes are high. Students who don’t pass can’t automatically go on to ninth-grade.

The numbers are even worse when it comes to sixth and seventh-grade social studies. Preliminary reports put the pass rate on those two exams at 20-30 percent.

"While, again, we do not have statewide or system results, we are fairly certain that a substantial majority of our sixth- and seventh-grade students did not meet the standards on the Social Studies exam," said Cox.

PDF: Superintendent Cox Statement On CRCT Results

Cox said new standards and a new curriculum are partly to blame and she’s asked a group of education specialists to figure out what has caused such poor performance.