"But even with the higher bar and the increased rigor, a majority of our schools met the mark,” said Cox.  Superintendent Cox released the state’s annual Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) report Friday morning.

The high school graduation rate – which is a standard that determines whether high schools make Adequate Yearly Progress under the act – is one example.  Georgia high schools had to demonstrate a high graduation rate this year – at least 70 percent – in order to make AYP for 2008.

Superintendent Cox announced that the state's preliminary graduation rate for 2008 is 74.4 percent – up more than two points from last year, and that a little over 2/3’s of Georgia high schools met the requirement.

Coweta County’s high school graduation rate was 76.0 percent in 2008.  All three Coweta County High schools made AYP this year under the higher standards.

“We are very pleased with results of high school performance,” said Christi Hildebrand, Coweta County School System’s Testing and School Improvement Coordinator.

“All three high schools made AYP even with a higher bar to meet in the areas of Math and English/Language Arts, and all three met the ever-increasing graduation requirement. The hard work of high school teachers, students, and administrators is evident across the system,” said Hildebrand.  “It is noteworthy that East Coweta High School will come off the needs improvement list this year after working to show improvements in areas of need over the past couple of years.”

Hildebrand worked with testing and school improvement at Evans Middle School before taking her new position.  She found there that one of the biggest hurdles she had to jump was explaining the sometimes complicated Adequate Yearly Progress standards and Needs Improvement formulas to her school community; the calculations and determining factors are complex and interrelated and often difficult to fully understand.  Educators and community members alike can spend hours scrutinizing information and still not see the full picture. 

Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) is a measure used to determine which schools are making progress from year to year. Under the federal No Child Left Behind act, all 50 states must adopt academic measures particular to the state to determine whether public schools are meeting AYP. Although all states use AYP as part of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, each state decides how to calculate whether a school is making adequate progress so there is often wide latitude in calculations from one state to the next.

In defining AYP, each state sets the minimum levels of improvement, based on student performance on state standardized tests, which school districts and schools must achieve within time frames specified in law in order to meet the 100% proficiency goal by 2014. These levels of improvement are known as Annual Measurable Objectives (AMO). AMO was established by the state to ensure that all student groups, schools, school districts, and the state as a whole reach this goal by the 2013-2014 school year.  This year, the AMO in each AYP testing area increased – some by as much as 6.6%.

In Georgia, AYP is determined by student academic performance, test participation, and either daily student attendance (in elementary and middle schools) or high school graduation rate (in high schools).

Georgia measures academic performance by the percentage of students meeting or exceeding on state standardized tests.  For elementary and middle schools, Reading and English/Language Arts and Math sections of the Criterion Reference Competency Tests are used to determine AYP.  For high schools, English/Language Arts and Math sections of the Georgia High School Graduation Tests are determining factors.       

Adequate Yearly Progress

To make AYP, each school and district must meet the following criteria:

• 95% Test Participation: Each school, as a whole, and all student groups with at least 40 members (or 10% of total population, up to 75 students) must have a participation rate of 95% or above on selected state assessments in Reading/English Language Arts and Mathematics.
• Annual Measurable Objectives: Each school, as a whole, and each student group meeting the minimum group size must meet or exceed the state's Annual Measurable Objectives (AMO) regarding the percentage of students scoring proficient or advanced on either the Criterion Reference competency test sections or the Georgia High School Graduation tests. For AMO, the minimum group size is 40 or 10% of the students enrolled in AYP grades, whichever is greater (with a 75 student cap).
• Second Indicator: Each school must meet the standard or show progress on a Second Indicator such as attendance or graduation rate. For Second Indicator, the minimum group size is 40 or 10% of the students enrolled in AYP grades, whichever is greater (with a 75 student cap).

In determining whether or not a school makes AYP, every student’s CRCT scores in the areas of Reading, English/Language Arts, and Mathematics is taken into account, as is every student’s daily and period attendance throughout the school year including all excused and unexcused absences.

Every school is also judged by the overall performance of student subgroups within the school. Subgroups are defined in the No Child Left Behind act, and include Students with Disabilities, economically disadvantaged students, gifted students, SST students, English Language Learners, and ethnic subgroups, as defined by the federal NCLB law.

Subgroups are counted as separate categories within a school for the purposes of AYP if the group size is 40 students, or 10% of the students enrolled in the school, whichever is greater (with a 75 student cap).  Students may count towards more than one subgroup within the school.

If students overall do not meet standards, then the school is deemed as not making AYP.  Also, if one or more subgroups within the schools does not meet standards, then the whole school is deemed as not making AYP, even if the school population overall made AYP. This is the case with most schools not making AYP in Georgia.  In fact, all Coweta County schools met AYP standards in the all students group but some schools ultimately fell short of the mark with one or more student subgroups. 

Needs Improvement

Under No Child Left Behind, there is no consequence the first year that a school does not meet AYP. While all Coweta County Schools write and review annual school improvement plans, schools that do not make AYP pay close attention to areas of weakness regarding AYP.

Schools that do not meet AYP criteria in the same subject for two or more consecutive years are placed in Needs Improvement (NI) status with escalating consequences for each successive year of not meeting AYP criteria.

The same subject is defined by the state as two years of not meeting Reading and English/Language Arts criteria (based on participation or academic performance) or two years of not meeting Mathematics criteria (based on participation or academic performance) or two years of not meeting second indicator criteria.

Schools that do not make AYP for two or more years in the same subject are in Needs Improvement status and are required to begin implementing school-level consequences including:

• School Improvement Plan
• School Choice
• Supplemental Education Services/Instructional Extension
• Corrective Action Plan
• Restructuring Plan

Just as it takes two consecutive years of not making AYP to be identified as Needs Improvement under No Child Left Behind, it takes two consecutive years of making AYP for a school to move out of Needs Improvement status.

If an NI school makes AYP for one year, it does not move out of NI status until the second consecutive year.

East Coweta high School, for example, did well academically in all subgroups and overall last year, and so made AYP for 2007.  The school remained on the NI list during the last school year, however.  Now that the school has made AYP in 2008, for the second year in a row, the high school is off the list.

Complexity

Evans Middle School is an example of the complexity of AYP calculations, said Hildebrand.  “During the 2006-07 school year, the school met academic standards overall and in every subgroup.  Their scores were very good.  But the school fell short on student attendance, so they didn’t make AYP.”

“This year the school was one student short of meeting AYP standards on the initial AYP report and fully expects to make AYP on the final September report. So they will officially make AYP this year.  They still won’t come off the NI list this year, however, despite the fact that they have done well academically in all subjects and categories for two years in a row.  The school has to make AYP for a second year in a row to come off the list.”

Schools that don’t meet AYP – or which are listed as NI schools – are not meant to be stigmatized, said Hildebrand.  “This is an accountability tool – something that lets schools and communities know in detail how a school is performing.”

According to the state, a Needs Improvement school is simply a school that has been identified as needing to improve in specific areas, said Hildebrand.  “Coweta has always taken an active stance on continuous school improvement at all schools and every school develops and implements a plan for continuous improvement regardless of AYP determinations.”  “Unfortunately, while the state stresses that Needs Improvement schools are not failing schools, a part of the community may interpret it that way,” she said.

Georgia and Coweta County’s No Child Left Behind status is a little more complicated than usual this year, because the state will recalculate AYP status in the next several weeks to include the scores of students who retook Math and Reading tests during the summer.  Ten schools not making AYP on the July list will be recalculated, and are the number of schools not making AYP is expected to drop to four schools when the final report comes out in September.

A large part of the reason was student performance statewide under the new state math curriculum and new math section of the Criterion Referenced Competency Test.

Academic Improvement

“Certainly, math scores in particular hit schools hard statewide this year and we were no exception,” said Hildebrand.  “A focus on continuous improvement is a tradition in Coweta schools, not because we are required to do it, but because we believe in its importance. Each year all schools develop school improvement plans to address areas of weakness.”

“While math has been an area of focus at many schools in the past, teams at the school and system level are looking carefully at strategies to improve mathematics achievement in preparation for the coming school year,” Hildebrand said. “One of the things we are most excited about is the math content specialist in place to support our teachers and students.”

“Last year we had four schools on the needs improvement list, and when all is said and done with the retest results included in the September AYP report, we expect to again have only four schools on the needs improvement list,” said Hildebrand. “85 percent of our schools will make AYP, and all of our schools already did well overall.”