Two more Cherokee County schools have been labeled as making Adequate Yearly Progress by the Georgia Department of Education.

The addition of Canton Elementary School and Cherokee High School on Thursday bring the district's total to 94 percent of schools making AYP. The schools were added to the list for summer Georgia Criterion-Referenced Competency Test retest scores for third and fifth grades, as well as summer high school graduates.

AYP is the measurement used to determine progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. It is made up of three parts - test participation, academic achievement and another statistic, called a "second indicator." Academic goals continue to rise every few years toward a goal of 100 percent proficiency for all students by 2014. This year, all of the academic goals remained the same as 2008, although the graduation rate bar rose.

All students at a school, as well as any qualifying subgroup of students, must meet goals in all three categories in order to make AYP. Schools that do not make AYP for two consecutive years in the same subject are placed in "Needs Improvement" status and face escalating consequences.

Canton Elementary School through the retest increased the percentage of students with disabilities meeting or exceeding the benchmark in math by 4.1 percent and in reading/language Arts by 5.1 percent.

Cherokee High School increased its graduation rate after summer graduation to 76.3 percent, exceeding the required benchmark of 75 percent. Cherokee High originally did not make AYP because its rate was 74.8, one student shy of the benchmark.

The district as a whole made AYP for its third consecutive year. District AYP is determined by aggregating all students in each subgroup and applying the same academic standard.