| Anna L. Mallory

anna.mallory@roanoke.com, 381-8627

More than half of the New River Valley's 42 schools have met the federal standard for student achievement, called adequate yearly progress, according to data the Virginia Department of Education released Thursday.

Twenty-eight schools -- 13 in Montgomery County, four in Pulaski County, two in Giles County and all in Radford and Floyd County -- made the mark.

Montgomery County school did better this year than last year, when only 11 of its schools met AYP.

To meet AYP, schools have to show that students of all demographic groups met pass rates on the previous academic year's state reading and math exams. This year, the scores to meet during spring testing were 81 percent in reading and 79 percent in math.

Under the No Child Left Behind legislation that created AYP, student pass rates increase annually, which is designed to raise the bar for student performance.

The stated goal of the legislation is to have all students meeting a 100 percent proficiency rate by 2014.

That could be difficult when scores among the demographics -- particularly black and economically disadvantaged students -- continue to lag behind their peers.

Even districts that see all students groups meeting the marks, such as Radford, have disparities.

In Virginia, 81 percent of black students passed the reading benchmarks compared with 93 percent of white students. Black students scored 13 points below whites in math.

In Montgomery County, economically disadvantaged and black students scored about 10 points lower than the average for all students divisionwide. Students with disabilities fared worse, with about 60 percent passing. In some schools, both sets of scores dropped from last year.

With 2014 looming, school officials are demanding that their administrators find the root causes for the lagging scores and make some dramatic changes.

"We look at this data, and it's the same groups that continue to struggle," Montgomery County School Board Chairman Wendell Jones said last week after viewing preliminary data. "We talk as a board and we talk as a division that we're going to do different things and they don't work. I want to see something different or a little outside the box," he said.

For the first time since the legislation passed seven years ago, teachers this year are expected get Web-based access to score data that they can use to drill down to particular students' needs. In the past, when teachers wanted to find out how a student scored on past tests, they would have to pull paperwork, said Carol Jennings, the county schools' director of assessment.

Once teachers are trained on the system, just put into place this summer, they should be able to take a closer look at who is having trouble and how to remedy that, she said.

Each year, school administrators do examine the data closely, but math, particularly at the middle school level, continues to be a problem.

"It's time to cut bait," Jennings said. "I think we're going to have to get a little bit more in detail this year,"

In some cases, many of the schools and the subgroups that did meet the standard did so by using special provisions in the federal regulations, such as "safe harbor" -- their low scores improved enough over the past school year to be considered as passing. That was the case in all Blacksburg's secondary schools and all the Christiansburg schools.

The county is making some strides.

Shawsville Elementary School, which had been under state sanctions, no longer is considered under school improvement. The law places schools with high percentages of economically disadvantaged students that do not meet AYP in the same subject area for two years in a row in school improvement status. Those schools are required to create plans that will increase achievement.

Like the county as a whole, Shawsville Elementary did slip in areas such as students with disabilities. But Amy Williams, the school's new principal, said she will continue working toward improvement. She said the change should be a morale booster for students and teachers.

Former Principal Chris Widrig, who will lead Blacksburg's Kipps Elementary School this fall, pointed to a focus on student learning styles, additional tutoring and reading help as reasons for the boost in scores.

School administrators will spend the next few months poring over the data. In October, they are expected to present findings on how to start improving countywide to the school board.