TIFTON — Ten of 11 Tift County public schools met Adequate Yearly Progress standards according to a report released recently by the Georgia Department of Education. Tift County High School’s graduation rate also improved from last year and three schools recieved the “distinguished” status based on the number of years they made AYP.

TCHS’s 2007 graduation rate of 62.9 percent is an improvement over the 2006 graduation rate of 59.8 percent, but the school failed to make AYP because of it. In May, the U.S. Department of Education raised the graduation rate goal from 60 to 65 percent.

“We, along with the state, are committed to increasing Tift County’s graduation rate,” said Betty Newkirk, the system’s assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction.

The graduation rate is calculated based on the approximately 600 students who entered the ninth grade in 2003 and the 221 student who did not graduate with the 2007 class. TCHS met all of the academic benchmarks for math and reading/language arts in the “all students” category. On the Georgia High School Graduation Test in mathematics, 72.6 percent of the students met or exceeded standards while 90.8 percent met or exceeded standards on reading/language arts on the graduation test.

The benchmarks were not met in two subcategories, the category for black students and the category for students with disabilities. Newkirk said that the school fell one student short of meeting the 95 percent participation requirement in the students with disabilities category.

Newkirk said the school system has put programs in place to raise Tift County’s graduation rate, including Sixth Street Academy, the Reading Recovery program and a graduation coach and after-school tutorial sessions.

“Summer school for credit recovery was provided at no cost to Tift County students,” Newkirk said. “These interventions will continue to be provided for students, along with the addition of a second graduation coach for the coming school year.”

J.T. Reddick, Omega School and Charles Spencer were each recognized as “distinguished” because the schools made AYP for three or more consecutive years. Matt Wiilson has made AYP for two consecutive years.

The 2007 AYP report showed that every school in the system met academic benchmarks in mathematics and reading for “all students,” the student group that includes each school’s entire student body. In the first through the eighth grades, Tift County met AYP academic targets in 14 of 14 subgroups.

AYP is one of the measures of the “No Child Left Behind Act of 2001,” which is a federally-mandated accountability system that measures student academic performance based on standardized tests. The goal is to have all students in all schools make or exceed academic standards by the end of the 2013-1014 school year. In order to make AYP, a school must meet state-set goals in test participation, academic achievements and a “second indicator” statistic, which is the graduate rate for high schools and, usually, attendance rate for elementary and middle schools.

The Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests (CRCT) administered to students in the third through the eighth grades and the Enhanced Georgia High School Graduation Tests (GHSGT) administered to eleventh grade students are used to calculate AYP. The state’s new, more rigorous curriculum has been implemented over the past two school years means that many of the tests used to determine AYP have been more difficult to pass.

Schools must show that all of the students school-wide and in nine groups are meeting or exceeding performance targets in math, reading/language arts and test participation. The nine groups include six ethnic groups, students who are economically disadvantaged, students with disabilities and students who have limited proficiency in English. Schools must also achieve attendance and graduation rate goals. In all, there are up to 40 performance and participation targets a school must achieve in order to make AYP. If one or more targets are not reached, the school does not make AYP.

Eighth Street Middle School fell into the Needs Improvement category in the second indicator of attendance in 2003 and in the second indicator of writing assessment for students with disabilities in 2004. A school must make AYP two consecutive years to be removed from the “Needs Improvement” category. The school made AYP for the second consecutive year in 2007 and was removed from the state’s needs improvement list.



To contact senior reporter Angie Thompson, call 382-4321.