Beaufort County Schools slides in AYP | Eastern North Carolina Now

    As the bar is raised, our performance lags

    Beaufort County Schools has posted a news release on its website showing that the school system did not meet "Adequate Yearly Progress" (AYP). Only four of the schools met AYP, The Early College High School, Bath Elementary and Chocowinity Primary, as would be expected from previous results. But Northeast Elementary met AYP for a second year in a row, up significantly from its previous results.

    Overall, the rate of improvement in Beaufort County Schools does not portend well for the future as AYP standards are increased. If the standards are not cut it might be reasonable to expect fewer and fewer schools in Beaufort County will meet those higher standards in the future.

    So while there are some good signs, such as at Northeast, there is a need for greater improvement at a faster pace than is apparently happening at this time. And it should always be remembered that AYP measures only minimal student performance. It is based on a prescribed percentage of students who should score minimally proficient in reading and math. In 2010 those percentages were: 43.2% in Reading in Grades 3-8 and 77.2% in math. For 20011 those percentages will be: 71.6% in Grades 3-8 in Reading and 88.6% in Math. The prescribed percentage has risen in three year increments, eventually leading to the expectation that 100% will be minimally proficient by 2014. And you can say you heard it first here: The standards will be reduced. Count on it.

    AYP does not tell us how well our best and brightest students do or how much progress each individual student has made in comparison to how much progress would be expected of that student. While they have the ability to do that at present, our schools do not choose to assess whether each student makes the progress he/she should be making. Need we say more about that?

    But if you want to know more about AYP click here for more than you'll ever want to know by using the left side bar links.

    Delma Blinson writes the "Teacher's Desk" column for our friend in the local publishing business: The Beaufort Observer. His concentration is in the area of his expertise - the education of our youth. He is a former teacher, principal, superintendent and university professor.