DECATUR - Test scores are out for Decatur schools, and results are mixed.

Most of the elementary schools met most of the hurdles required by the federal No Child Left Behind law, with scattered exceptions, but both middle schools and both high schools missed the mark.

At Tuesday's school board meeting, Daniel Brown, director of research for the district, presented the results to the board.

Reading scores for minority, low-income and special education students were low at all four secondary schools. Math scores for minority, low-income and special education students were lower than the reading scores. At Thomas Jefferson Middle School, only a little more than 10 percent of black students met or exceeded state standards in math, while 7.1 percent of special education students and 15.7 percent of low-income students met or exceeded standards. At Eisenhower High School, 10.4 percent of black students met or exceeded standards in math.

With the tests taken in the spring, the law requires 47.5 percent of students overall and in each subgroup meet or exceed standards to make "adequate yearly progress."

"With (adequate yearly progress), you either make that score or you don't," Brown said. "It's all or nothing."

So Brush College School, with 46.7 percent of students meeting or exceeding in reading, is categorized as failing to make adequate yearly progress, and Parsons, at 47.1 percent in reading, is in its second year of not making adequate yearly progress. In the second year, sanctions begin, and Parsons will have to offer students choice this year. Parents already have been informed and provided with a list of schools to choose from if they want to take that option.

By 2014, 100 percent of students must meet or exceed for a district to make adequate yearly progress.

Sanctions get more severe as a school fails to meet the standards several years in a row. Don Long, director of special projects, told the board Tuesday that the district as a whole and MacArthur High School face the three-year sanctions. In addition to offering choice and tutoring to students, the district and MacArthur must develop a school improvement plan, do a school and district analysis (which is part of the school improvement plan process followed by Decatur schools) and consider an extended school day and year.

By next year, if Eisenhower, Thomas Jefferson and Stephen Decatur fail to make adequate yearly progress again, the federal government requires a plan for restructuring, which could include replacing the staff and principal and eventually could even lead to state takeover of the school.

"With whom do you replace them?" board member Terry Robinson said, smiling a little when members of the audience laughed but pointing out that he hadn't meant to be funny. The government, he said, lists these sanctions without defining exactly what will happen if those sanctions go into effect.

Long said because the law is still fairly new and districts are just now moving into the years when sanctions begin, no one is completely sure what will happen as those consequences kick in.

Nationwide, 47 states are taking some sort of action against No Child Left Behind. Utah, Colorado and Connecticut are in what the Civil Society Institute calls "open revolt." The institute recently published a study on grass-roots backlash against the law.

Decatur's dropout statistics are a little more encouraging. Last year's one-year dropout rate was 6.8 percent, down from 9.6 percent the previous year, and is the lowest it has been in 20 years. The one-year dropout rate counts all students enrolled in high school.

The 2005 four-year dropout rate rose, however, from 34.7 percent to 37.4 percent. The four-year rate counts only students who should have graduated in that year.

It's hard to be absolutely certain of the accuracy of those numbers, said Christine Pinckard, dropout prevention coordinator for Decatur.

"If they move out of the district and don't tell us they're moving, that's (counted as) a dropout," Pinckard said.

Superintendent Elmer "Mac" McPherson said the district is doing several things to improve student achievement, from lowering class sizes and offering intensive professional development to teachers, spending money on the latest curriculum, putting technology into the classrooms and expanding summer school to middle school students.

"We must continue to raise the bar and lower the achievement gap (between white students and minority, low income and special education students)," McPherson said. "We must keep those students in focus each day as we go to work."

Valerie Wells can be reached at vwells@;herald-review.com or 421-7982.