Friday, February 8, 2013

Who Made AYP in Southeast PA?

Adequate Yearly Progress is the standard all public schools and charter schools strive to meet under the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Known as "AYP," the standard measures school districts as a whole, as well as individual schools, and even "sub-groups" of specific populations within individual schools.

Examples of the sub-groups include students from "economically disadvantaged" or those with an Individual Education Program or "IEP," which most people refer to as special education.

Failure of any sub-group to hit the year's target scores leads to the school building of charter school failing to make AYP

The targets which Pennsylvania students must score "proficient" or "advanced" on standardized math, reading and science increase each year.

The test currently used to measure this progress is called the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, or PSSA. Plans are now underway to transition to a more sophisticated test system called the "Keystones."

Until recently, individual charter schools were graded by the Pennsylvania Department of Education as if they were an entire school district, making it easier to "make AYP."

However the federal government has decided charter schools must be graded in the same way as individual school buildings.

As a result, many charter schools which had previously been identified as "making AYP" lost that status when the more stringent measuring stick was applied.

Below is a searchable database of AYP status in 2012, 2011 and 2011 for all public schools and charter schools in Southeast Pennsylvania, comprised of Berks, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties.

You can search by county, school district, or AYP status.

The information was gleaned from data at the Pennsylvania Department of Education's web page.

Online Database by Caspio
Click here to load this Caspio Online Database.

Labels: , , , ,