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No matter what teachers and staff do, Franklin Elementary just can’t seem to get ahead of adequate yearly progress.

Released Tuesday night, the state’s annual adequate yearly progress report is tied to the federal No Child Left Behind Act and is a measure of student achievement based on the MCA-II tests, which students take in the spring. Indicators include graduation and test-participation rates, but most of the focus is on proficiency rates in reading and math.

The goal of No Child Left Behind and AYP is to ensure 100 percent math and reading proficiency for all students by 2014.

But, as Franklin is proving, plugging one leak tends to only spring another.

“We are very excited about the gains we made this year,” said Franklin Principal Les Koppendrayer. “But at the same time, we’re a little disappointed to still be on the list.”

The “list” Koppendrayer refers to is the list of schools not making adequate yearly progress, a list that this year included Franklin's name — along with East and West High Schools, Kennedy, Washington and Garfield Elementaries, Dakota Meadows and East Junior High and the Central schools.

But the list doesn’t tell the whole story.

Several years ago, many student groups at Franklin — which is Mankato’s largest and one of its most diverse elementaries with more than 600 students — were not making AYP in reading.

In response, the school adopted the slogan “a community dedicated to literacy” and made reading proficiency and comprehension the top priority in the classroom. After years of targeted efforts, Franklin finally met its adequate yearly progress marks for all student groups in reading two years ago.

Only to find themselves still on the list — but for math.

“We really made some big strides in reading,” Koppendrayer said. “But then we had to step back and put a little bit more focus back on math.”

Once again, Franklin turned things around.

During the 2007-08 school year, Koppendrayer said math instruction was the prime focus of the school’s Professional Learning Communities and that teachers took extra initiative in developing new instructional methods and strategies.

“We didn’t develop new programming of any kind,” Koppendrayer said. “The teachers just really focused on getting kids to the next step. Without high-quality instruction, no program is very effective.”