Nine of fifteen or 60% percent of Vance County Schools were reported as meeting federally-mandated Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) yesterday.
The results are preliminary pending approval by the North Carolina State Board of Education on August 5, 2010.
The Vance County Schools institutions not meeting the standard are Eaton-Johnson Middle School (met 80% of 25 target goals), Henderson Middle School (82.8% of 29 target goals), Pinkston Street Elementary School (76.9% of thirteen target goals), Southern Vance High School (41.2% of seventeen target goals), Northern Vance High School (58.8% of seventeen target goals), and L.B. Yancey Elementary School (84%) of 25 target goals.
A school is said to have made AYP when a majority of students pass end-of-course and end-of-grade tests in each of the federally-defined “subgroups” comprising the population of a school. Subgroups are defined by gender, ethnic background, and special-needs status. The entire population of a school is also defined as a subgroup for the purpose of determining AYP status. If more than a small part of any one subgroup fails the test, the entire school is deemed “failing” under AYP, hence the political appellation of the law, “No Child Left Behind”, under which the system was enacted in 2002.
The percentage of students who may fail end-of-course or end-of-grade testing and still allow a school to meet AYP is reduced each year with the goal of all students passing the required tests by the 2013-2014 school year.
In the 2009-2010 academic year, students in grades 3-8 needed to meet a proficiency target of 42.3% in reading and 77.2% in math. Next year, they will need to meet a proficiency target of 71.6% in reading and 88.6% in math, a leap of nearly thirty percentage points in reading.