WCPSS Releases Preliminary AYP Results
July 21, 2006--The Wake County Public School System today released the preliminary results for Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) under the federal "No Child Left Behind Law" (NCLB).
The two schools in school improvement last year, Hodge Road and Lynn Road elementary schools, both met their Reading AYP targets for 2006. By meeting its AYP Reading targets for two consecutive years, Lynn Road is no longer identified for school improvement. Hodge Road needs to make AYP again next year to get out of school improvement.
"Our teachers and principals, especially those at our Title I schools who were in school improvement last year, have worked tirelessly to ensure our students were successful according to this 'all or nothing' federal measure," said WCPSS Superintendent Del Burns. "AYP is simply one way of looking at the excellent teaching and learning taking place in our classrooms every day."
No additional WCPSS Title I schools have been identified for school improvement based on Reading results. The six WCPSS Title I schools who did not reach AYP in Reading for the first time last year, raised test scores and were successful in 2006. If a Title I school does not make AYP for two years in a row in the same subject, the school enters school improvement status. At that point the school must offer all students the option to transfer to another school.
Of the 138 schools scored under NCLB, 90 achieved the goal of 100 percent across multiple student group targets, and the N.C. Department of Public Instruction is resolving issues at three other schools. Last year, of the 132 schools scored under the legislation, 82 achieved the goal of 100 percent.
"Evaluation and Research staff recognized as soon as we got our first set of results from DPI that there were systematic errors in the results," said David Holdzkom, WCPSS Assistant Superintendent for Evaluation and Research. "We immediately began an intensive data verification process in consultation with DPI to try and get those data corrected. While we realize this has held up the release of the preliminary AYP results, we thought it was more important to ensure that the data for each school were accurate before we released them."
Analyses of the state's End-of-Grade and End-of-Course tests are used in both the NCLB's Adequate Yearly Progress and the state's ABCs of Public Education, but each standard looks at the data in different ways. Adequate Yearly Progress measures subgroups of students against a fixed performance standard for all students. The ABCs of Public Education measures academic growth of students over the course of a year.
Because of changes in the math End-of-Grade test, the state Department of Public Instruction will not release those scores until early October. Today's AYP results are considered preliminary due in part to the fact that those scores are not yet available.
The passing rate targets apply to defined student subgroups. In order to qualify as a subgroup, there must be at least 40 students identified under one of nine separate categories: White, Black, Hispanic, Native American, Asian/Pacific Islander, Multiracial, Limited English Proficiency, Economically Disadvantaged and Students with Disabilities. The school itself must also meet the target as a whole in order to meet the goal.
WCPSS will perform a detailed analysis of the data over the next couple of weeks.
You may find school-by-school AYP results at http://www.wcpss.net/test-scores/ayp/.
For additional information, please contact N.C. Department of Public Instruction at 919-807-3300 or visit www.ncpublicschools.org.
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