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July 29, 2011 Dear Parent, This letter is to inform you of Plain Elementary’s standing with the federal requirements for Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) as defined by the No Child Left Behind Act. AYP provides another method to measure student progress. Adequate Yearly Progress reports the percentage of each student group scoring at the Proficient level, which is defined as Met or Exemplary on the n PASS tests for students in grades 3-8. Student attendance is also used to determine AYP status. Our attendance rate must be at least 94% each year or improve from the previous year. AYP goals are set by the state and differ from other states’ goals. AYP targets for South Carolina students scoring Proficient have more than doubled since 2005. To meet AYP goals, individual groups of students are expected to meet or exceed the following percentages of students at the Proficient level: Grades 3-8 2002-2004 2005-2007 2008-2010 2011-13 2014 Reading 17.6% 38.2% 58.8% 79.4% 100% Mathematics 15.5% 36.7% 57.8% 79.0% 100% Although proficiency cut scores and achievement tests differ from state-to-state, the No Child Left Behind Act calls for ALL students in the U.S. to achieve the Proficient level on state tests by 2014. In South Carolina, that means ALL student groups will have to show considerable improvement each year on the PASS (new State testing program). The student groups are: All, White, African-American, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, American Indian/Alaskan, Limited English Proficiency, Disabled, and Free-Reduced Price Lunch Participants. If just one student subgroup fails to meet one of the performance or percentage tested objectives in a given year, that school will fail to meet AYP for that year. Schools with diverse student populations face more challenges to meet AYP. For some schools, that means significant improvement must be made each year on up to 37 different goals. For 2010-11, Plain Elementary School did not meet AYP. Our school met 20 of our 21 AYP target goals for the year. We did not meet our AYP target goal for the subgroup Disabled in the area of math by 2.4%. Because we did not make Adequate Yearly Progress, our school will focus on
ways to close achievement gaps and bring every student to the Proficient level
(Met or Exemplary on the PASS tests). 83.7% of students overall at our school
are performing Proficient on Math and 87.3% are performing Proficient on
Reading. We are very proud of the continuous academic growth shown by our
students. The school attendance rate is 96.4% which is an increase from last
year. If you have questions about our school's AYP result, please call me. For further information about Adequate Yearly Progress, please visit the Greenville County Schools website at www.greenville.k12.sc.us. Sincerely, |