WENDELL — For the third year in a row, Wendell Elementary School has failed to meet the federal No Child Left Behind standards in math even though unofficial test results show 10 percent improvement on scores. 

“That can be deflating,” said Principal Winston Pierce. “But we have a wonderful group of teachers who are working very hard and very smart to make a difference. 

Failure to meet AYP, or Adequate Yearly Progress, means the school faces sanctions again this year.

Parents have been given the option of sending their children to Wakelon or Carver Elementary Schools. It also means the schools will have opportunities for supplemental education services and corrective action could be taken.

Corrective action could include professional development for the staff, aligning instruction with the state’s standard course of study, extending instruction and steps that could affect staffing and organization of the school.

The longer it takes a school to exit Title I school improvement the more sanctions are applied to the school.

Though Zebulon Elementary School made the standard during the 2008-2009 school year, it needs to make it in 2009-2010 to be out of Title One School Improvement.

Student scores on end of year tests are divided into subgroups. Each subgroup must make AYP in order for the school to make AYP. “It’s kind of like saying everyone in town has to run a 5K,” Pierce said. “Some people are going do it in two hours and some people are going to take longer. There are some subgroups or whether it be individuals within those subgroups that are just going to take longer.”

The goal of No Child Left Behind is for every student to be on grade level by 2014.

Pierce said teachers are working hard to try to get that to occur. She said teachers and administrators will be weighing the test data to determine which kids were successful and what supplemental activities were in place for those students to be successful.

She said the school worked with a math specialist two days a month to help teachers work on lesson plans to solidify conceptual understanding for students.

“We actually connected to her through a resource in Wake County,” Pierce said.

She said the supplemental educational services offered by the school system as part of the sanctions are quite helpful. She said the next step is to analyze the data and determine what options there are to help students make improvement in math more quickly.

“We’re having parents who are watching their children grow by leaps and bounds and they say, ‘We know our children are learning,’” said Pierce. “Nobody likes to be stuck with a label that’s negative, but it also presents us with a challenge that we want to rise to.”