Four of the county’s schools met adequate yearly progress (AYP) standards for this year, however, six schools did not meet the requirements, which resulted in the Polk school system as a whole being listed with the state department as failing.

Polk schools not meeting AYP standards include Cedartown High, Cedartown Middle, Euharlee Kindergarten, Goodyear Elementary, Rockmart High and Westside Elementary.

Cherokee Elementary, Northside Elementary, Eastside Elementary and Elm Street Middle all passed AYP this year.

Under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, schools are measured every year in testing competency, testing participation and varying factors like school attendance and graduation rates. Sorrells said the graduation rate has improved this year for the county’s two high schools.

“We have to look at the positive,” Sorrells said. “We actually had very good results with the test scores that went up and that reflects on the teachers and students hard work.”

Sorrells said the difference between passing and failing AYP boils down the to sub-groups that students are placed into. “The whole school can fail because of one sub-group that fails,” Sorrells explained.

The sub-groups are based on ethnicity, disabled students, economically disadvantaged students and students with limited English proficiency.

There are different reasons that caused the six schools to fail AYP this year, Sorrells explained.

At Cedartown High School, one sub-group (students who were listed as economically disadvantaged) failed testing requirements in English/language arts. Economically disadvantaged students are those students meeting requirements for the district’s free and reduced lunch program.

At Cedartown Middle, one sub-group (students with disabilities) failed testing in math.

The economically disadvantaged sub-group at Rockmart High School failed the math testing requirements and the disabled student sub-group at Westside Elementary failed English/language arts testing.

Euharlee Kindergarten failed AYP because too many students missed more than 15 days of school and at Goodyear Elementary, the disabled student sub-group failed English/language arts testing.

“We have some groups of students that we will have to try harder with next year,” Sorrells said.

Because this is the second year in a row that both Cedartown High School and Cedartown Middle School have failed AYP, they have been listed as a “needs improvement” school.

Needs improvement schools give parents the option to move their children into a passing school.

Sorrells said results from Cedartown High and Middle schools are being appealed. A ruling on that is expected sometime later in the year.

In Georgia, for the 2005-06 school year, 1,630 schools made AYP, compared to 1,670 the previous year, according to the Georgia Department of Education. This means that 79 percent of Georgia schools made adequate yearly progress in the 2005-2006 academic year, down from about 82 percent the year before.

(Standard staff writer Michael Packer and wire reports contributed to this article).