A federal evaluation of Greenwood and Leflore County schools' test scores shows that students from radically different backgrounds and segments of the population are achieving.
But that's not the case at all the schools.
Half the schools in the city and fewer in the county met the federal government's definition of accountability under the No Child Left Behind act. And in Carroll County, just one of three - Hathorn Elementary School in Vaiden - passed.
The good news is that no schools in the three districts are subject to sanctions based on their performance.
But W.C. Williams Elementary School in the city and East Elementary in the county are teetering right on the edge this year.
The federal guidelines measure adequate yearly progress, or AYP, which addresses three categories: reading/language arts, math, and improvement or graduation rate. Schools must meet all three to be deemed passing.
Neither Williams nor East met AYP, for any of the categories, and they will have to pass in both reading/language arts and math in the spring to escape sanctions.
If a school doesn't meet AYP in either of the first two categories two years in a row, it is placed into "school improvement," meaning the students there must be given a choice to transfer to another school in the district. Further failure would bring down more corrective action, including program restructuring, personnel changes and or eventual state takeover.
But most of the schools are adjusting to the new system, says Barbara Corbett, director of testing and curriculum for Greenwood Public Schools.
"Fortunately, there is a phase-in process, and that's where we're able to make so many improvements this year, so many the next year, and so on," she said.
Greenwood Public Schools administrators saw a potential pitfall in Greenwood High's math scores, which were sub-par last year when the first set of results were recorded under the No Child Left Behind criteria. But high school students passed all three standards this time.
Greenwood Middle School met all three requirements this year, although Principal Robert Sims says he isn't resting easy.
"The whole thing is based on growth," he said. "You can't stay complacent. It's a moving target."
Sims called the results "a true assessment of where we are."
The only weak area for the school was seventh-grade math. To correct that deficiency, the school is offering intervention and peer tutoring during the school day, and after-school tutoring starts Thursday.
Other schools that met all the guidelines are Claudine Brown Elementary in the county district and Bankston Elementary and Greenwood High School in the city.
Bankston Elementary also received a Level 5 superior rating, the highest the state offers. Those results show more than overarching success at the school. They detect basically equal success among students of different racial backgrounds.
The No Child Left Behind model evaluates nine different subgroups, based on race, socio-economic standing and disability, to detect whether a particular segment of the school population isn't meeting expectations. For the city and county schools, no more than five of those determinations counts because all students are on the free-lunch program, and neither the Asian nor Native American students number 40, the minimum required for a sub-group.
That system complements the state model nicely, Corbett said.
"We're having to focus on both of them because the state achievement and growth model is a product of the whole," she said. "If it's low, something in the whole mass of students had to bring you down. So, actually, the federal model helps us look at the state model and find the weaknesses in the whole picture."
While the federal assessment for the most part fell in line with state ratings, the two systems don't always match up.
In the Leflore County School District, for instance, Amanda Elzy High School was deemed an "underperforming" Level 2 school by the state but passed all federal measures, including a minimum 72 percent graduation rate. T.Y. Fleming, a Level 4 school, which is "exemplary" in the state's view, did not meet federal standards for improvement.
Fleming Principal Annie W. Johnson said the results disappointed her at first. But she now finds the ratings helpful in steering all areas of her school in the right direction. Most of the deficiencies according to the report were in the sixth grade, which is receiving extra intervention this year.
"Whether it's fair or unfair, we've still got to abide by the federal and state guidelines," Johnson said. "We've got to step up to the plate."
