It does not get any better than this. All of Fayette County 28 public schools met the federally-required Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) standard for 2008. Fayette was one of 34 school systems in Georgia where every school in the system met the standard.

Fayette is also one of only a handful in the state with 100 percent AYP rankings for the past five years. And for Burch Elementary and North Fayette Elementary, the accomplishment put them on a list of just 31 schools across the state that have made the list each year for the past 10 years.

“Fayette is among 34 systems in Georgia with all schools meeting AYP requirements in 2008,” said school system spokesperson Melinda Berry-Dreisbach. “Of these systems, all have less than 10 schools compared to Fayette’s 28. Fayette is the only metro Atlanta school system with all schools having made AYP over the five-year period.”

Statewide, approximately 69 percent of all schools met AYP requirements in 2008, including 76 percent of elementary schools, approximately 65 percent of middle schools and 48 percent of high schools made AYP in 2008, according to the Georgia Department of Education.

AYP is a requirement of the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. It is a measure of year-to-year student achievement on statewide assessments.

It was harder for all schools to make AYP in 2008 for two main reasons, said state School Superintendent Kathy Cox.

“First, the percentage of students that had to pass state tests in math, reading and English went up for all grade levels,” she said. “Secondly, students were doing more rigorous work and taking more rigorous tests in 2008, especially in mathematics.”

Cox emphasized that in 2007-2008 the state’s more rigorous curriculum and more rigorous tests in mathematics were implemented in all grades considered for AYP in elementary schools.

“It was a lot tougher for elementary schools this year,” she said. “Still, more than three out of every four elementary schools made AYP, the best performance of all grade levels.”

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