Curriculum & Instruction

Adequate Yearly Progress

The Cobb County School District continues to adjust its instructional programs to ensure it can meet the strict standards established by the Federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2002. The law requires individual schools, and the District as a whole, to meet specific measures of progress on standardized tests each year. In addition, individual groups of students, as defined by ethnicity, language and disability, must also meet these measures.

Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) data for 2007 shows the District continuing to improve, with fewer schools failing to make AYP and two schools, East Cobb Middle and Pebblebrook High, coming off of school improvement status. South Cobb High School also made AYP and will be removed from school improvement status if the school meets standards in 2008.

Overall, 94 of Cobb County’s schools, or 88 percent, made AYP in 2007. That percentage is up from 80 percent in 2006 and compares to 82 percent of schools statewide that made AYP. Cobb reduced the number of schools not making AYP to 13 in 2007, down from 21 in 2006. In nearly every case, the Cobb schools that did not make AYP fell short in the academic progress of specific subgroups of students. The Students With Disabilities subgroup showed improvement at the high school level in Math and English Language Arts, but still fell short of the percentage required for AYP. The English Language Learners subgroup also showed improvement in Math, but still fell short in the same subject areas. The District’s System Improvement Plan has been modified to take a more specific approach to improving academic performance for these subgroups of students.

Three middle schools, Floyd, Griffin and Lindley failed to make AYP for four consecutive years and have reached restructuring status. The District will develop a Restructuring Plan for each school that will be implemented in the 2008-09 school year if the school does not make AYP for 2008.

Even with the progress made by key subgroups of students, the District continues to be labeled a Needs Improvement district because one or more of those subgroups fell short of the standard. Next year, those standards will raise even more and will continue to increase in subsequent years.

For more information about Adequate Yearly Progress in Cobb, visit the District’s special online section regarding No Child Left Behind. Point your browser to www.cobbk12.org and click on ‘No Child Left Behind’ in the ‘Popular Links’ section.