Four out of seven Fayette County

schools originally named to the state's list of those not meeting

Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) last year have successfully appealed, and

of the three that remain, just one was cited for academic shortcomings.

Fayette County High and J.

C. Booth Middle were unable to prove they tested the required 95 percent

of students with a learning disability, in each case missing by just one

or two students the percent needed to pass AYP and get off the list.

Flat Rock Middle School tested

99 percent of its learning disabled students, but just 44 percent of those

were graded proficient or advanced on the reading portion of the Criterion

Reference Test. The state requires that 60 percent of students in that

category meet or exceed the norm in order for a school to qualify for

AYP.

Sandy Creek High, Fayette Middle,

Rising Starr Middle and Hood Avenue Primary have all been designated "passing"

of "needs improvement" schools released in August.

Then, just 58 percent of schools

statewide were shown to be in compliance with AYP, a measure of student

performance on standardized tests that breaks down scores according to

race, ethnicity, disability and socioeconomic factors. As part of the

federal No Child Left Behind Act, it requires that 95 percent of students

at each school participate, or rather, that "no child be left behind."

More than 63 percent of Georgia

schools were shown to have met the state's accountability goals at

the conclusion of the AYP appeals process.

Some 430 schools appealed their

status to the DOE. Of those, 249 were federally-designated Title I schools

and 181 were non-Title 1 schools. This was the first year that non-Title

1 schools were included in the AYP report. Hood Avenue is the only one

of Fayette County's seven Title 1 schools that did not meet AYP in

the first round, but it was able to prove passage after all.

"More schools in our state

can now celebrate the hard work of their teachers and the achievement

of their students," said State Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox

of Peachtree City.

"This shows that Georgia's

schools are doing better than originally thought, which moves us one step

closer to leading the nation in improving student achievement."

Fayette County's final

results matched state trends showing Georgia's middle schools were

most likely to have failed AYP. Of the 406 middle schools in Georgia,

just 78 met the requirements, for a pass rate of 19.20 percent.

High schools did slightly better.

Of 361 schools across the state, 106, or 29.40 percent, proved they met

AYP.

A whopping 88.5 percent of

all Georgia's elementary schools met AYP. Of 1,224 elementary schools

in the state, just 141 failed to make the grade, for an 88.50 percent

passing rate.

Cox cautioned that labeling

those schools not making AYP as "failing schools" would simply

be wrong, since AYP data shows that some of the schools, like Fayette

County High and J.C. Booth Middle, met or even exceeded all academic standards,

simply to fall short in the test participation category.

Having put a season of AYP

releases and appeals behind her, Cox said the AYP Appeals Committee and

the Governor's Office of Student Achievement have already begun identifying

ways to make the process easier for school systems next year. The appeals

process is being standardized and paperwork will be streamlined, making

it easier for schools to file appeals while speeding the committee's

response time.

Also expected to speed the

process in the future is the new Student Information System (SIS). Through

the system, every Georgia student will be assigned a unique identifier

that will allow the state Department of Education to more effectively

track students as they move from school to school and match tests to their

records.