Three of the four public high schools in Jackson County failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) under the initial assessment released last week by the Georgia Department of Education.
Commerce, East Jackson and Jackson County high schools came up short of making AYP as required under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Only Jefferson High School made AYP thus far.
However, countywide, just one other school, West Jackson Middle School, failed to meet AYP.
The schools still have a chance to meet AYP since low-performing students were given the opportunity to re-take the tests by which AYP is measured. In lower grades, that is the CRCT, while at the high school AYP is based on graduation test results. Attendance also comes into the equation, but is seldom an issue locally.
Commerce superintendent of schools James E. “Mac” McCoy is confident that in the end Commerce High School will meet AYP.
“We did not make it in the graduation rate, which is the second indicator, and the graduation test in Language Arts,” McCoy explained. “Our graduate rate was 83.4 percent, and the state cutoff (to make AYP) was 85 percent, so we feel like with the retakes that happened last week, when we get that feedback, we’ll be okay.”
It will take just one student succeeding on the retake to bring CHS into compliance, he said.
CHS had the exact same graduation rate in 2011 as it did in 2010, but because the AYP bar was raised, that wasn’t good enough.
The other area was in the graduation test for Language Arts, where CHS scored 90.2 percent against a state goal of 90.8.
“Again, with the retakes, we feel like we’ll be okay,” the superintendent said. Again, one student passing on the retake will put CHS over the bar.
The standards by which AYP is measured increase every year. By 2014, every child is required to pass for a school to be AYP.
Not all educators are thrilled at the system, which McCoy declared “is based on the Texas model, which we now know was a bunch of skewed numbers.”
McCoy pointed out that the state dropped funding of the CRCT for the second grade. And while Commerce funded the CRCT for second graders and scored the test itself, the state instead used third-grade CRCT scores from Commerce Elementary School to determine AYP for the primary school.
“Our primary school made AYP based on our third-grade scores,” said McCoy with a laugh.
EJCHS
At East Jackson, principal Pat Stueck said events of the first year of school had a lot to do with not making AYP this year.
The school came up short in its graduation rate, with 81.2 percent of students graduating, according to the state formula.
“We made it in every other area except the graduation rate,” Stueck said. “Quite honestly, I prepared the board for not making it. My first year (2007-08) I had 26 tribunals and I expelled a lot of kids and couldn’t recoup them.”
This is the first year EJCHS had its own graduation data, because until it had four years in existence its kids counted statistically for Jackson County Comprehensive High School.
She said getting all-EJCHS data will help in the future.
“When you get your own data, you can look at particular groups and see where you are and where you need to direct your energies,” she said.
She also said that the state continuously “tweaked the data” for determining what constituted a dropout and what did not.
