Three Cartersville Schools Make AYP

The Georgia Department of Education today released its initial Adequate Yearly Progress report, which shows how schools are meeting goals prescribed by the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Three of the four schools in the met the goals, while failed to do so.

Across the state, fewer schools made AYP this year because of the academic bar being raised in all categories, including the Georgia High School Graduation Test and the Math Georgia High School Graduation Test, according to the Georgia Department of Education. The graduation rate that high schools must meet also increased this year to 85 percent.

"We have many great schools in the state providing a high-quality education to all students," state School Superintendent John Barge said in a press release. "But the rate at which the academic bar and the graduation rate requirement increased this year prevented more schools from making AYP. We knew we were up against the proverbial wall because this bar increases each year, and it appears that we have begun to hit it.”

In addition to academic achievement and test participation benchmarks, schools under No Child Left Behind must also meet or surpass goals in a third area known as a "second indicator." For high schools, that indicator is graduation rate; for lower-level schools, it is the attendance rate.

All students at a school, as well as any qualifying subgroup of students, must meet goals in all three categories for the school to make AYP.

Schools across the state will have to continue to increase their academic results in the coming years as goals move closer to a required 100 percent proficiency for all students by 2014.

Here are the details for each city school:

The final AYP report will be released in the fall and will include summer retest scores, summer graduates and appeals.