86 percent of Alabama schools make annual goals

Nine of 12 Lee County Schools joined other schools in Alabama to make up the 86.48 percent of schools across the state that met 100 percent of their goals to achieve Adequate Yearly Progress in reports released Monday by the Alabama Department of Education.
“System wide we are all clear, and we continue that tradition,” said Lee County School Superintendent Dr. Stephen Nowlin in a telephone interview.
Monday’s department of education news release lists those Lee County schools that made 100 percent of their goals to achieve Adequate Yearly Progress as: Beauregard High, Beauregard Elementary, Beulah High, Beulah Elementary, Loachapoka Elementary, Smiths Station Primary, Smiths Station Elementary, Smiths Station Intermediate and Wacoochee Junior High.
He said county schools officials are working on those schools that did not make 100 percent.
“Three schools did not make it, two of them because graduation rates went down,”  he said.
“Naturally, everyone wants to focus on the three that don’t make it for some reason and it was just one category out of about 21, so they almost made it.
“Smiths Station greatly improved some of their test scores. Academically, they went up significantly last year, but the graduation thing was missed by one or two students.”
Loachapoka High, Sanford Middle and Smiths Station High were among the 186 schools, according to the release, that did not achieve 100 percent of their individual goals, 106 made 90 to 99.99 percent, 42 made the 80 to 89.99 percent, 17 made 70 to 79.99 percent, 13 made 60 to 69.99 percent and only eight schools statewide achieved less than 60 percent.
Nowlin said there are several subgroups on which you have to make goals.
“At Sanford, they did not make it because of scores for the special education subgroup out there,” he said. “Other than that, they did OK.”