Results of the 2008-2009 report released by the Georgia State Department of Education (DOE) earlier this week showed that all three Coweta County high schools, all 18 elementary schools and four of Coweta County’s six middle schools made the required Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). In total, 93 percent of Coweta schools met AYP requirements.

“These results reflect the diligent work of our students, teachers, and principals. Our schools generally do well, but this is exceptional,” Superintendent Blake Bass said.“Almost all of our schools and our school system as a whole met the standards of (federal) No Child Left Behind. In the case of Evans Middle School and Lee Middle School, a single subgroup of students did not meet AYP standards. Overall, our students and teachers did a great job.”

Evans Middle and Lee Middle met academic standards for their students overall and in most subgroups, said school system Public Information Officer Dean Jackson. The schools narrowly did not meet No Child Left Behind Act standards in CRCT Mathematics for the subgroup of students with disabilities, said Jackson.

The Coweta County School System also made Adequate Yearly Progress as a school system among all subgroups of students tracked by the report. Bass said that, in total, 93 percent of Coweta County’s schools made AYP, compared to 79 percent in the state of Georgia.

Adequate Yearly Progress is a measure of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. The report tracks the academic progress of schools every year by monitoring average student attendance (for elementary and middle schools) or high school graduation rate (for high schools) and student academic performance on state standardized tests given during the year. In Georgia, the Math, Reading and English/Language Arts portions of the Georgia Criterion Reference Competency Test (CRCT) or the Georgia High School Graduation Test (GHSGT) are used.

Jackson said schools are judged by the percentage of students who meet or exceed the standards of those tests during the school year. The performance of students is also tracked by subgroups including students with disabilities, economically disadvantaged students, English language learners, and ethnic subgroups.

Schools make Adequate Yearly Progress if an adequate percentage of students meet yearly standards, and if all subgroups within the school’s population also meet the standards, Jackson said. If one or more subgroups within the school do not meet standards, then the whole school is deemed to have not made Adequate Yearly Progress.

Jackson said the state will re-calculate AYP performance in September to take into account the scores of 3rd, 5th, and 8th grade students who passed a retest of the CRCT in reading and math. Students who did not pass those tests in April were retested in May after remediation.

Based on preliminary records, Jackson said the school system expects that Evans Middle School’s status will be changed to “meeting AYP” when that report is issued in the fall.

Under No Child Left Behind, a school is identified as “Needs Improvement” if it has not made Adequate Yearly Progress in the same subject for two consecutive years. Once identified as Needs Improvement, a school must make AYP for two consecutive years to come off the Needs Improvement list.

Schools designated as Needs Improvement must abide by the appropriate consequences for the needs improvement status which may include offering supplemental tutoring services or offering transfers to other schools that are identified as transfer sites by the school district, said Jackson.

Three Coweta County schools are listed as “Needs Improvement” on the state report, including Arnall Middle School, East Coweta Middle School and Evans Middle School.

Jackson said Evans Middle school made AYP in the 2007-08 school year. When Evans Middle’s AYP status is corrected in the fall, the middle school will drop the Needs Improvement designation. Transfers and supplemental services will still apply at Evans throughout the school year.

The consequences announced by the school system for Coweta’s three Needs Improvement schools are:

•Arnall Middle School: School Choice transfers and supplemental services available to eligible students.

•East Coweta Middle School: School Choice transfers and supplemental services available to eligible students.

•Evans Middle School: School Choice transfers, and supplemental services available to eligible students.

Parents will be able to apply for transfers from the three schools before the new school year begins in August. Transfer sites for the three schools and the dates during which parents can request transfers will be announced shortly, Jackson said.

More information can be found on the Georgia Department of Education’s website at www.gadoe.org.

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