What must a School District or School Do to Make AYP?

Districts and individual schools make AYP by meeting the state’s goals for each year. That means each subgroup in the school or district must meet the state goal for the percentage of students scoring at or above “proficient,” as well as the school or district as a whole. However, if any subgroup(s) falls below AYP, the school may use the safe harbor formula to escape not meeting AYP if they can show that a subgroup(s) not meeting the AYP goals decreased by 10 percent, AND made progress on one of the additional state indicators. Schools are only accountable for the academic success of students who have enrolled in the school for at least one full academic year. However, these students must be part of the school district accountability data. To account for fluctuations in test scores, schools can average tests scores for up to three years and can combine student achievement data from multiple grades.

In addition, 95% of the students in each group must be assessed, as well as 95% of the students in each school and district taken as a whole. Children with disabilities who take an alternative assessment must be included in the 95% standard. In the case of a subgroup that is deemed to be too small to produce statistically reliable results, the school would not be identified as failing to make AYP if 95% of the students in the subgroup do not take the assessment. For example, if a state determined that any sub-group size below 40 would not provide reliable results—meaning that a valid conclusion about the performance of that subgroup could not be reached with a smaller sub-group size—a school could NOT be identified as not meeting AYP it did not meet the 95% participation requirement. However, if at least 95% of a sub-group higher than the state requirement—say hypothetically above 40—a school could be identified as low performing because the subgroup fell below the 95% threshold.

School districts, as well as schools, are required to meet the AYP requirements. If the district assessment scores as a whole (as well as subgroups in the district) fall below the state AYP expectations, the district would be identified as not meeting AYP.