After five years of trying, the Trigg County school district has met its No Child Left Behind goals, and principals and administrators are holding their heads high and presumably tossing and turning less in their beds at night.

The tone of last week’s Board of Education could not have been much different from their meetings last August when the 2006 No Child Left Behind scores were made available. After four years of not making adequate yearly progress (AYP), the district had been relegated to Tier Three status. Although principals said they were confident that they would prevent it from happening again, pulling schools out their tier status is an uphill battle, since the required percentage of students to reach proficiency in reading and math increases each year. Now that they have made AYP, the schools will have a firmer foundation on which to build when preparing for this year’s tests.

NCLB requires that all school districts in the country meet standards of proficiency by 2014, and sets a standard of improvement to be met each year. The federal government leaves the standard of testing up to the states, and Kentucky uses the Commonwealth Accountability Testing System (CATS).

Get all the information on CATS testing and NCLB on the front page of your Cadiz Record.