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Three more Coweta County schools were determined
to have made “Adequate Yearly Progress” (AYP) during 2011,
following an update of testing results and other school data
measured under the federal No Child Left Behind act.
Northgate High School, Lee Middle School and Ruth Hill
Elementary School all made AYP in 2011. Their status was revised
under an amended No Child Left Behind (NCLB) report issued by
the Georgia Department of Education on Thursday.
That means that 25 of Coweta’s 28 schools made “Adequate Yearly
Progress” in 2011, while three did not. By comparison, all
Coweta County schools made Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in
2009, and only one did not make AYP in 2010.
“Our retest and remediation efforts proved to be beneficial for
our students,” said Superintendent Steve Barker. “As a result,
our performance under current No Child Left Behind measures have
exceeded state performance, even with the escalating
requirements that we experienced this year.”
Also in 2011, the school system as a whole had a graduation rate
of 82.1% (down slightly from 84.4% in 2010). At the same time,
the requirement of NCLB increased the graduation rate standard
from 80% required to make AYP in 2010 to 85% in 2011. The system
as a whole was 2.9% under that increased graduation rate.
Because of the increase in the required graduation rate under
NCLB, the Coweta County School System did not make AYP during
2011, according to this year’s report.
Following the significant increases in the minimum measures of
the NCLB act in 2011, 37 % of Georgia schools did not make
“Adequate Yearly Progress.” With Thursday’s revision, 11% of
Coweta schools did not make AYP during the same year – including
East Coweta High School, Newnan High School and Poplar Road
Elementary School.
In many cases in Coweta County, schools would have made AYP
under last year’s passage rates but did not make it because the
bar was raised for 2011, or met the bar among students overall
but did not make AYP because of performance within one or more
subgroups.
• East Coweta High School – Did not make AYP because of subgroup
passage rates for math and English/Language Arts graduation
tests and overall graduation rate.
• Newnan High School – Did not make AYP because of overall
graduation rate.
• Poplar Road Elementary School – Did not make AYP because of
subgroup passage rates on CRCT math. Overall school population
met AYP bar.
As school systems across the nation have experienced
difficulties in meeting escalating NCLB standards in all
subgroups, there has been increasing agreement that AYP
performance calculations should be revisited. The Georgia
Department of Education, education agencies from other states,
and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, have said that
current NCLB legislation is in need of adjustment.
Secretary Duncan has said that he is prepared to give public
schools relief from federal mandates under NCLB if Congress does
not pass the law’s long-awaited overhaul and reauthorization,
which is four-years overdue, according to Duncan.
Georgia Superintendent of Schools John Barge has submitted a
waiver request to the U.S. Department of Education outlining new
measures that will be used to evaluate Georgia school
performance. The waiver is expected to be approved or denied
before the end of the calendar year, according to state
officials.
“We are encouraged by the prospects of approval of the state’s
new evaluation system, because it would measure our student,
school and system performance more accurately,” said Coweta
School Superintendent Barker.
The No Child Left Behind act (NCLB) was developed by the federal
government nearly a decade ago as a new accountability system
for the nation’s public schools. Schools are required to meet
escalating pass rates on high stakes tests in English and math,
and must meet escalating requirements set for test participation
and either attendance (in elementary and middle grades) or
graduation rate (in high schools).
Under NCLB, the required success rate is called the annual
measurable objective (AMO). Meeting this requirement is
sometimes called “making the bar.” The requirement is a
measurement applied to groups of students rather than to
individual student performance.
To make AYP, every school must meet the bar in its overall
school population, and in a number of student subgroups. Under
current legislation, the bar rises each year for all schools
until, by 2014, 100% of students must pass math and English
tests, meet other academic requirements, and graduate.
For example, high school graduation rates (for the overall
population and subgroups within the school) had to exceed 80% in
2010 to make AYP. Those rates rose to 85% in 2011. Required
graduation rates rise to 90% next year, and to 100% by 2014.
Required math passage rates for high schools also rose this
year, for all students and subgroups, from 67.6% last year to
75.7% this year. They rise to 83.8% next year, and to 100% by
2014.
Coweta’s performance under NCLB in 2011 reflects state and
nation-wide trends. Because of rising performance criteria,
schools that do well or make significant gains in one year can
still not make AYP. Newnan High School, for example, saw an
increase in math Graduation Test passage rates from 2010 to 2011
(94% of students overall passed the graduation math test in
2011, up from 74.7% in 2010). The school as a whole – and all
subgroups – met NCLB academic standards in 2011, but did not
meet graduation rates under the 2011 bar.
With continuously rising bars for all subgroups, high schools
also tend to be affected before other schools. Coweta’s three
high schools have larger student populations than its elementary
schools, so they have a greater AYP challenge. Middle schools
also face the challenge of large testing groups, because all
middle school students test.
For high schools, and for school systems as a whole, calculation
of graduation rate also poses a higher risk for schools to be
labeled as not making AYP. Students who might need more than
four years and one summer semester to graduate can complete
their education with a high school diploma. However, these
students do not count as graduates. They are calculated as
dropouts for the purposes of AYP/NCLB.
Students on Special Education diplomas are not counted as
graduates, even though they might have met and exceeded their
IEP goals. Students who successfully earn the 28 required
credits to earn a diploma but who have not passed all five
graduation tests also do not count as graduates. They are
calculated as dropouts.
To address these difficulties, educators in Coweta County are
working diligently to provide opportunities for student success.
Credit recovery programs and remediation are being offered
before school, after school, and at lunch. Staff members are
involved in professional development, and numerous
research-based teaching methods are being employed in
classrooms. However, because of the rising bar of high stakes
testing as a measure, a school may receive a negative label even
when students are being more successful than ever before.
As a result of the many challenges created by NCLB, the Georgia
High School Graduation Test will no longer be used for AYP
determination after the 2010-2011 school year. This test,
administered to juniors, is two years removed from much of the
content that is taught during the freshman year. Beginning next
year, specific End of Course Tests will be used to calculate AYP.
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