When it comes to making Adequate Yearly Progress for school systems across the country, almost perfect doesn’t always cut it.

As a district, the Pell City School System met 113 out of 116 academic goals, but was still designated as not making AYP for the year.

Williams Intermediate didn’t make adequate progress in math, meeting 95.24 percent of their goals, while Pell City High School fell short in reading, making only 88.24 percent of their cells.

“Williams Intermediate School had 21 academic goals to accomplish and made 20 goals. That’s heartbreaking. It’s either pass or fail, there is no in-between,” Assistant Superintendent Michael Barber said. “You can make 20 out of 21 goals and be identified as a school that needs improvement. We can all stand improvement, even in our schools that did make AYP. It was just disheartening to make 20 out of 21 and be identified in a negative way.”

The high school made 15 of their 17 goals, as well.

“As a system, we met 97, almost 98 percent of our goals, but that’s still in this accountability plan characterized as a failure,” Barber said.

Barber said the AYP system, dictated in the No Child Left Behind Act, is inherently flawed, but is in the process of reevaluation and reauthorization at the federal level.

“I’m glad they’re looking at it, and glad that they’ll hopefully correct some areas of concern,” Barber said. “I think now they’re getting to the discussion of the part of it that isn’t necessarily indicating what it should.”

Despite any flaws in the system, Barber said the district will work hard toward maintaining high academic achievement in each of the schools.

“Accomplishing 113 out of 116 goals doesn’t mean we don’t look at those 113 goals too. We’re not going to take our eyes off that,” he said. “If we met 99 percent, our goal is still 100 percent.”

A local education agency improvement plan is in the works, Barber said, which measures how the districts delivers instruction and how it is measured.

“We also have continuous improvement plans for the schools, whether they made AYP or not. We are diligently working toward 100 percent,” he said.