Georgia Department of Education removes Albany Middle School from watch list

ALBANY — The Georgia Department of Education has upgraded the status of Albany Middle School, pulling it from a watch list of under-performing schools. The move means that school officials have successfully completed the criteria to exit the GaDOE’s Titile I Priority and Focus Schools lists, lifting the school out of a program that monitors school performance.

“It has taken new, dedicated, determined and inspiring leadership to make the kind of progress we have seen at Albany Middle within a short period of time,” Ufot Inyang, associate superintendent for academic services, said Thursday. “A visit to the school shows a renewed spirit to achieve, a sense of purpose and urgency, a new culture of high expectations and accountability for both faculty and students, and a can do spirit that is determined to take the school to heights yet unknown in the history of the school. While we commend the entire Albany Middle School family for this wonderful accomplishment, we also want to challenge them to continue on this path of growth, transformation and achievement.”

As part of the waiver from No Child Left Behind, the Georgia Department of Education was required to identify Priority, Focus, and Alert Title I Schools, which were determined based on achievement data from all core content areas, graduation rate data, and gap between the highest performing and lowest performing subgroups based on achievement.

“The faculty and staff of Albany Middle School must be commended for successfully meeting the exit criteria to be removed from the state Focus Schools list,” Inyang said. “A Focus School is a Title 1 school that has the highest within-school gaps between the highest achieving subgroup or subgroups and the lowest achieving subgroup or subgroups. It is to the credit of (principal) Eddie Johnson and his team that they have made good progress indicative that they are closing the achievement gap between the subgroups at Albany Middle.

“This is evidenced in the fact that the school gained eight points on the College and Career Performance Index (CCRPI) in the latest (2014) DOE CCRPI scores over its 2013 performance.”

Albany Middle is one of 38 schools of the 235 schools on the list statewide to have improved enough to come off the list and is the fourth district school to come off the state’s list in 2014. Jackson Heights Elementary, Northside Elementary and Martin Luther King, Jr., Elementary School were each upgraded earlier in the year.

DCSS Schools remaining on the watch list are: Priority — Albany High, Monroe High and Dougherty High. Focus — Radium Springs Middle.