The Jackson County School System has lost its appeal of a designation saying one of its schools failed to meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).
The Georgia Department of Education announced Tuesday that 241 schools that didn’t initially meet AYP in July later made AYP after a final report was available or an appeal was approved.
The Jackson County School System was appealing a decision that Jackson County Comprehensive High School didn’t meet AYP, due to its graduation rate.
The state department of education listed JCCHS’s graduation rate as 67.4 percent in 2008. High schools need a graduation rate of at least 70 percent to make AYP.
School superintendent Shannon Adams has said the appeal centered on the fact that JCCHS’s graduation rate includes students from East Jackson Comprehensive High School, which opened in August 2007.
The Georgia DOE grouped the graduation rate from the two county high schools for JCCHS’ AYP report, Adams said in July. Officially, EJCHS won’t have a graduation rate accounted for its AYP status until the fourth year after its opening.
Adams said the county school system learned Tuesday morning that the appeal was denied. Since JCCHS didn’t meet AYP, the entire district is designated as failing to meet AYP.
“We had been assured all along that we had an excellent basis for appeal since we opened our second high school last year, but obviously there was some misunderstanding,” Adams wrote in an e-mail Tuesday afternoon.
The school system is currently hosting a team from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) to determine the district’s accreditation. The team will finish its visit today (Wednesday).
Adams said after the team leaves, he will speak to the state DOE about an explanation.
The No Child Left behind Act has got to be the poorest implementation of trying to better our education. It holds teachers and administrators accountable for children not learning or passing. I can understand this to some degree, but come on! Why should a school be held accountable for the children's learning and the parent not. I think that it's a parent responsibility to reenforce what is being taught in school and I just don't think that many of them are. Instead they would rather blame the school.
I went to JCCHS and dropped out. It was not the teachers fault or the schools. It was my dumb mistake. For them to be held accountable for my choice is just not right. I have since got my GED and enrolled in college. I am in my second year with a 4.0.
I want to thank all the hard working teachers and staff at all Jackson Co. schools. You tried to help, but I did not listen back then, but I remembered and now I am fixing my mistake, not yours!!!
They still graduated, they should count!
Do you know why Jackson County Schools did not meet AYP? Did you look that information up before this post? If not let me help. AYP for Jackson County Schools is taken by looking at the number of entering 9th graders we have for a given year and then how many of those 9th graders graduated from the school. The entering number of 9th graders did not match the graduating number of 12th graders because we built a new school. Those 9th graders essentially went to another school where they graduated and did not in turn graduate from JCCHS. Makes sense now. Of course we could not have met AYP for that. All expectations and goals have been set for AYP to be back on track. The media sometimes leaves out key nuggets of information. Speaking as a teacher whose school SACS (as a professor I am sure you are familiar with them) visited, they could not have been more impressed.
I am a proud alumni of Jackson County Schools. I am proud employee of Jackson County Schools. So you go back to the college lecture hall and do what you like. I'll go back to the trenches and fight the battles that keep you employed. No doubt you'll one day educate the student I taught to read. Your welcome.
JCCHS did not make AYP because the school split. Any educator looking at the reports can see that. The ruling should have been overturned.
No Child Left Behind is a great piece of legislation when it is carried out the way it was intended to be used. At this point in the game, NCLB is nothing more than useless ink and paper. Schools are going crazy, teachers are overworked(and we love what we do or we would do something else), administrators are in over their heads. In the end, I don't think it will survive long enough to reach the inital dates that were proposed for all students to be "at grade level".
If we, teachers, administrators, parents and community will stop blamming each other for legislation that we didn't write and teach our children, (remeber: It takes a village to raise a child.) then our students will be fine. And I don't mean teach- just give content and nothing else. I mean teach for mastery and comprehension, then there wouldn't be a problem.