AYP goals both met and missed

Once again, all four of Madison County’s schools satisfied federal academic benchmarks – although as a division, the school system did not.

The Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) requirements, which were established by the federal No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, are based on participation and achievement of students on state Standards of Learning tests and the high school graduation rate. The recently released results are based on the 2007-2008 school year.

Each school is judged in 29 categories with some flexibility regarding year-to-year improvement, according to school officials.

All of Madison’s schools met or exceeded the requirements in all categories, including surpassing the 95 percent participation requirement for both the math and English SOL tests and the AYP 61 percent graduation rate benchmark, which MCHS exceeded by more than 20 percentage points.

However, the Madison County school system is judged in 35 categories, which all must be satisfied to meet AYP as a division, according to officials.

The three categories Madison County Public Schools as a division did not satisfy are:

• English performance of students with disabilities, including special education students and students with physical and mental disabilities.

• Math performance of black students.

• Math performance of students with disabilities.

The school system – which has seen lower math scores in recent years – has been working to improve its math curriculum offered for kindergarten-eighth grade students, according to Superintendent Brenda Tanner.

While Tanner thinks that state assessment standards are of “high quality,” she does not believe the federal Adequate Yearly Progress “all or nothing” requirements are an effective way of reporting a school system’s performance.

“There are so many measurements and for AYP to say it’s ‘all or nothing’ is not exactly the best way of reporting progress,” she said.

For example, if a particular school or school division misses any one AYP benchmark by any margin, it is simply reported to not have satisfied the federal requirements, according to Tanner.