Polk County Schools is among a handful of North Carolina School Systems to have met all its target criteria, according to the federally mandated Adequate Yearly Progress Report (AYP) is released yesterday.

All seven Polk County schools met their targets tests for AYP standards in English and mathematics. Student bodies are divided into groups and subgroups chosen by race, economic background, disabilities and other factors.

Last year, Polk Schools barely missed out on meeting its targets because federal education officials rejected a test proposed by the state for a small group of students at Polk County High School. AYP is part of the Federal No Child Left Behind legislation approved in 2002. Without that test, PCHS could not meet all of its targets.

Its a great tribute to our teacher, students, principals and parents everybody, said Polk County Schools Superintendent Bill Miller. It takes a lot of people pulling in the same direction to make something like that happen.

Miller said he expects fewer than five districts out of the 115 in the state have met all of their AYP targets this year.

Students must have a 68.5 percent grade-level proficiency in math and a 38.4 percent grade-level proficiency in English in order to meet their targets.

With all federally approved tests in hand, PCHS met all 13 of its targets.

Polk County Middle School had the most targets among Polk County schools with 21. Tryon Elementary School had 17 targets and met all of them.

Polk Central Elementary met all 13 of its targets as did Sunny View Elementary. Saluda met all nine of its targets while the early college program with a student body of about 40 met its two targets.

Our teachers and students and everybody in our schools works hard for our kids, said Dave Scherping, Polk County Schools accountability director. This shows that when you do the right things, you can get the right results out of it.

When created, the No Child Left Behind legislation included a goal of 100 percent proficiency by the 2013-2014 school year.