Brumby Elementary School and East Cobb Middle School were designated as "focus" schools by the Georgia Department of Education Tuesday and will receive additional state funding to boost student achievement. 

The new designation, which applies to 156 schools around the state, was required as part of the state's recent waiver from certain No Child Left Behind mandates. 

Focus schools, as Maureen Downey of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution noted, are those that have graduation rates of less than 60 percent and are not on the priority list, which was issued last week and is for the worst-performing schools (none in East Cobb). 

According to the Georgia DOE, Brumby and East Cobb Middle were placed on the focus school list because they have large performance gaps between their highest- and lowest-achieving student subgroups. 

Brumby passed Adequate Yearly Progress goals dictated by NCLB last summer in all the criteria except student achievement. East Cobb Middle missed AYP originally and in summer retesting for the first time in five years. In a letter to parents last July, Principal Tiffany M. Honoré detailed the AYP data and pledged to "continue our focus on improving the academic achievement instead of numbers."

The new designation calls for direct state assistance for the next three years to close the gaps, including tutoring for students and professional development for teachers and staff that the AJC reported could begin as early as June. 

The full list of Georgia schools on the focus list can be found here.