Schools meet AYP goals

It’s once again clear sailing for Hartselle City Schools.
Hartselle’s system made its Annual Yearly Progress goals, an accomplishment it’s achieved for more than five consecutive years. Included in the annual assessment are reading and mathematics standardized testing scores, attendance rates for elementary and middle schools and graduation rates for high schools.
Each elementary school and Hartselle High School had a perfect report card, achieving each of the assigned goals. Goals differ from school to school based on student subgroups, such as minority or special education students.
Hartselle High School’s graduation rate was 91 percent, 1 percent higher than its goal and up 2 percent from the previous year.
The system’s only blemish came in the reading scores among special education students at the junior high school. That subgroup failed to show improvements in its test scores, causing HJHS to miss out on its individual AYP goals.
As a whole, Morgan County’s System did not make its AYP goals, with reading scores being the most troubling area.
Individually, schools achieving all their goals were: Eva School, Falkville Elementary, Falkville High School, Priceville Elementary School, Sparkman Elementary School, Danville-Neel Elementary School, Brewer High School, Danville Middle School, and Priceville Junior High School.
Priceville High School failed to achieve its AYP goals due to its 88 percent graduation rate. Danville High also failed because of its graduation rate. It was 77 percent.
Falkville High’s graduation rate was 89 percent. Brewer High School reported a 74 percent graduation rate. Both received passing grades on graduation rates even though they fell below the 90 percent goal because they showed improvement from the previous year.
Hartselle’s system is among the 75 percent of state schools that achieved AYP goals. No Child Left Behind requires the percentage of students meeting the proficient standards to increase annually. NCLB’s goal is for 100 percent of America’s students to be proficient in reading and math by 2014. That goal makes the pressure on school officials to show yearly improvement even higher.
“As the deadline of 2014 gets closer, the requirement of perfection gets closer. Having the ‘requirement’ of No Child Left Behind that every student in America be proficient in Reading and Mathematics is very different than the ‘goal’ aspiring that every student hit that mark,” Dr. Joe Morton, State Superintendent of Education said. “Every year the bar gets higher and higher and every year Alabama students show improvement. The challenge is to have our improvement trajectory be the same increase as the annual goal requirement trajectory.”