Just over half of Scotland County's 21 public schools met their AYP goals, according to preliminary results released Monday.

Scotland County Schools had 11 schools to meet their Adequate Yearly Progress targets as set by No Child Left Behind for the 2009-2010 school year.

This included all but one of the county's 10 elementary schools and two of the county's seven high schools. Last year, 15 schools made AYP.

Nine of the schools failed to make the standards, including all three middle schools and the alternative school. Last year, five schools failed to make AYP.

One school, the Ninth Grade Academy, did not yet have data available. The school met its AYP targets in 2007-2008 and 2008-2009.

The official results will be released on Wednesday.

The federal figures are in sharp contrast to the state's ABC's of Education report, released two weeks ago, that said only two schools were failing to show improvement.

School spokesman Andy Cagle said AYP goals are a difficult criteria to meet as it set targets for as many as 25 subgroups at each of Scotland's schools, with all groups needing to meet proficiency standards at a particular school for the school to pass.

"It's a tough model," he said.

Many schools were close to meeting their targets, he said.

Carver and Spring Hill middle schools both met 24 out of 25 targets. Sycamore Lane was close behind, meeting 23 of 25 targets.

Cagle said the school system was not satisfied with its performance, adding that Scotland Schools still did well – overall, the system met 257 of 284 targets, or 90.5 percent.

"There is always room for improvement," Cagle said.

He said administrators will look at AYP data in tweaking the curriculum, but will rely more on the ABCs.

"The ABC data is really more useful," he said.

The state testing provides more detailed information that is broken down better by demographics.

"The AYP data is really not as comprehensive (as the ABC data)," he said.