The Knox School Board heard the Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP, and the Public Law 221 results at its meeting Monday night. Director of Curriculum and Instruction, Peggy Shidaker, and the three building principals, Glenn Barnes, Steve Cronk and Dr. Elizabeth Ratliff, explained the results to the Board.
“The Corporation did make AYP along with the Elementary School and the Middle School,” explained Superintendent A.J. Gappa. “The High School fell short in one category and that was in participation. Part of the reason is because of the confusion coming from the Department of Education about who needs to take the English 10 portion of the test and when they’re going to take it. Some of the students who were repeating English 9 were not able to take the End of Course Assessment and so we fell less than a percentage point short of the participation rule, but in the performance results, we were ahead of the State average and would have qualified for AYP.”
“The Elementary School, which would have been in the Exemplary School category, was capped and could only make Academic Progress,” said Gappa of the PL 221 results. “The Middle School scored their best ever and they are at Commendable Progress. The High School, because of some rule changes and the comparison of End of Course Assessments with 8th grade ISTEP tests, fell into the Academic Probation category, as did 49 percent of the other High Schools in the state.”
The Board was happy to hear that all three schools are making progress and improvement.
