Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP)
Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) is used to measure student performance for schools and districts overall and every major subgroup, disaggregated by race/ethnicity, English proficiency, disability and socioeconomic status. It is a series of performance goals that every school, every school system, and every state must achieve within a specified time period in order to meet the 100% proficiency goal – every child will meet or exceed standards by 2014 – of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
Adequate Yearly Progress applies to all 2,003 public schools and 181 school systems in Georgia. For the first time, AYP will be determined for both Title I and non-Title I schools. Non Title I schools must meet AYP but they are only subject to state rewards and sanctions not federal rewards and sanctions. All of Colquitt County Schools are Title I funded with the exception of the High School, the Middle School Learning Center, and Vereen Elementary.
Georgia will use the Criterion Referenced-Competency Test (CRCT) as the Adequate Yearly Progress assessment tool for elementary and middle schools and the Georgia High School Graduation Test (GHSGT) for high school.
AYP Determinations
To meet Adequate Yearly Progress, each school, LEA, student group, and the state as a whole, must:
- Have 95% of its students participate in state testing
- Meet or exceed the state’s annual measurable objectives for proficiency
- Show progress on an additional indicator
If any school/LEA does not meet the annual measurable objective on the state test, it maystill make Adequate Yearly Progress if:
- the percentage of students below proficiency decreases by 10% from the preceding school year (called “SafeHarbor”) and
- it meets the state’s requirement on an additional indicator
Elementary and Middle Schools
For school years 2002-2003 and 2003-2004, to make Adequate Yearly Progress in elementary and middle schools, there must be
- 95% participation and
- a minimum of 60% of students in each school must meet (Level II) or exceed (Level III) standards in reading/language arts on the CRCT and
- a minimum of 50% of students in each school must meet or exceed standards in math on the CRCT.
Second Indicator
The Second Indicator for school year 2002-2003, chosen by the state, was attendance, which means
- no more than 15% of the students in a school can be absent more than 15 days in a school year.
In 2004-2005, the bar raises to 66.7% in reading/language arts and 58.3% in math. The bar will be raised incrementally until 2014 when every child is expected to be at 100% proficiency.
Since only grades 4, 6, and 8 were tested during the 2002-2003 school year, only those scores were used to calculate Adequate Yearly Progress for this year’s report. The CRCT is scheduled to be administered in grades 1-8 in the 2003-2004 school year and beyond.
High Schools
For school years 2002-2003 and 2003-2004, high schools:
- must have a 95% participation rate in the GHSGTand
- 88% must achieve pass or pass plus in English/language arts and
- 81% must achieve pass or pass plus in math.
Second Indicator
The second indicator is the high school graduation rate, which does not include the certificate of attendance. High school graduation rate is defined as the number of students who graduate high school with a regular diploma in the standard number of years (4 for grades 9-12 high schools).
Georgia publishes annually the Title I Report of Adequate Yearly Progress which provides the status of all Georgia schools. Schools are designated as follows:
- Distinguished (DIST) – schools that meet or exceed state standards three or more consecutive years
- Adequate (ADEQ) – schools that met state standards for two consecutive years or did not attain Adequate Yearly Progress for one year.
- Needs Improvement and Made Adequate Yearly Progress (NI-AYP) – schools designated in previous year(s) as needs improvement but made Adequate Yearly Progress in the current report
- Needs Improvement (NI) – schools that have not met state standards for two or more consecutive years.