For the third year the Harlan County School System remains in Tier 3 status, even though the district met 92.3 percent of the goals set for the district by federal guidelines set up by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.

The Harlan County School System reached 12 of the 13 goals set by NCLB, but failed to meet the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) overall.

The Harlan Independent School System reached nine of its 10 goals, the first time in six years the district didn’t meet all 10 goals. A decline in the graduation rate kept the city district from a perfect score.

“While we did not meet the goal for graduation rate for the class of 2008, we did meet all of our assessment goals and showed overall districtwide improvement in all of the content areas tested last year,” Harlan Independent Schools Superintendent David Johnson said. “A higher percentage of our students reached or exceeded the state standards than ever before in all content areas. Even though we obviously have more work to do, the efforts of our students and staff are producing academic results.”

Johnson pointed out that the 2008 senior class was the smallest in recent school history with only 43 students, which makes any dropouts more statistically significant.

County district officials hoped by focusing heavily on math this year, the new Harlan County High School would reach the math goal set by NCLB, but that wasn’t the case. This year also saw a failure to meet the reading progress that NCLB set for HCHS.

Kentucky recorded a decline in the number of public schools that made “adequate yearly progress” last year on achievement tests required under the federal program, according to an Associated Press report on results released Wednesday.

Those scores, released by the Kentucky Department of Education, show that 60 percent of the state’s 1,157 public schools met their educational goals last school year. That was down from nearly 73 percent the year before.

“This is only one measure of a school’s success,” said Lisa Gross, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education. “So, even though the data is important and does show us things, people should not see this as some sort of final judgment on a school.”

While there were 461 schools that did not reach their goals, nearly 230 of them attained at least 80 percent.

All county schools reported an increase in each of the test areas, but the score needed to meet AYP for the NCLB changes every year. Each year the AYP test scores increase 10 points in math and seven points in reading. So, as an example if a goal of 77 was needed, but a score of 75 was obtained, the score for next year increases, changing it to 87, making it harder to obtain AYP from year to year.

Brent Roark, Title 1 director for Harlan County schools, explained that even though the AYP goals were missed great improvement was made.

“We had very high expectations for the math department at HCHS, and through their hard work they managed to make a great increase. It wasn’t enough to reach our targeted goal, but we are making a move in the right direction,” Roark said.

The Harlan Independent School System also fell short this year by not reaching the standards set by the AYP in reading and mathematics but still met 90 percent of the overall target goals set by NCLB.

All but three of the county’s eight elementary schools met 100 percent AYP by reaching all of the goals set by NCLB. Cawood, Green Hills, James A. Cawood, Rosspoint, and Wallins met both the required reading and mathematics progress for NCLB. Cumberland Elementary School had the lowest scores by only reaching 45.5 percent of the NCLB goals. Black Mountain met 70 percent and Evarts met 90 percent of the established NCLB goals.

“We are unsure of why Cumberland was so much lower. At this point, we can only speculate and work on improving,” Roark said.

Currently, the Harlan County School System is in Tier 3 status as a district. This means the district has not met AYP for six years. NCLB requires the district to notify parents using state provided information, revise its district improvement plan, receive technical assistance from the state and receive corrective action from the Kentucky Department of Education.

Even though the district is listed in Tier 3 status, none of the county schools will enter into or incur any consequences associated with failure to make adequate yearly progress in accordance with NCLB.

The Kentucky Department of Education reported that only 19 percent of high schools and 37 percent of middle schools throughout the state met the AYP goals.

“We are very proud of the fact the graduation rate increased from 66.57 percent in 2007 to 72.34 percent in 2008. This increase allowed us as a district to meet one of the primary NCLB goals,” Roark explained.

NCLB is a federal law that measures public schools progress in reading and mathematics through statewide testing. The law was signed in 2002 and requires states to provide information on schools’ progress towards proficiency by 2014.

Schools and school districts that fail to meet AYP are subject to corrective action through a tier system of consequences. Until this year, only schools that received Title 1 money for programs that provide educational services to disadvantaged children were subject to sanctions from NCLB.

In March of 2009, Senate Bill 1 was signed into law which requires state accountability for non-Title 1 schools. If a non-Title 1 school does not meet AYP in the same content area for two consecutive years, the school will be eligible for state assistance.