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The ins and outs of school grading law

Here’s more information about the recently released AYP scores from the state Department of Education Web site:

AYP is one of the cornerstones of the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). It is an annual measure of student participation and achievement of statewide assessments and other academic indicators. Accountability is key to NCLB: the state of Georgia, each local school district, and each individual school will be held accountable for the academic success of students. The federal law requires that each state set high academic standards and implement an extensive student testing program which is aligned with standards and which measures students’ achievement based on the standards. AYP requires schools to meet standards in three areas: Test Participation (for both Mathematics and Reading/English Language Arts), Academic Performance (for both Mathematics and Reading/English Language Arts), and a Second Indicator. AYP holds each local school district and each individual school accountable for the academic success of students. AYP comprises one component of Georgia’s Single Statewide Accountability System (SSAS).

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

• 95 percent participation: Each school, as a whole, and all student groups with at least 40 members must have a participation rate of 95 percent 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 state assessments in Reading/English Language Arts and Mathematics. For AMO, the minimum group size is 40 or 10 percent of the students enrolled in AYP grades, whichever is greater (with a 75 student cap).

• Second Indicator: Each school, as a whole and as subgroups, must meet the standard or show progress on a Second Indicator. For Second Indicator, the minimum group size is 40 or 10 percent of the students enrolled in AYP grades, whichever is greater (with a 75 student cap).

In defining AYP, each state sets the minimum levels of improvement, based on student performance on state standardized tests, that school districts and schools must achieve within time frames specified in law in order to meet the 100 percent proficiency goal. These levels of improvement are known as Annual Measurable Objectives (AMO) to ensure that all student groups, schools, school districts, and the State as a whole reach this goal by 2013-2014.