CORINTH-HOLDERS — Paula Coates, principal of Corinth-Holders School, cites the movie “Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius” as an inspiration in life. Typically pegged as the greatest amateur golfer of all time, Jones often said he never learned from a tournament he won. The ones that slipped away, though, forced him to get better, to grow not only as an athlete, but also as a human being.

Now Coates hopes the golfing great’s words will work for her school. For a second straight year, Corinth-Holders, a combined elementary and middle school south of Zebulon, did not meet federal standards under the No Child Left Behind Act, according to preliminary results recently released.

The law holds all schools nationwide accountable in showing that every student — regardless of race, English proficiency, family income and other factors — is meeting adequate growth in reading and math.

If one group, special education students for instance, don’t measure up, then the entire school is deemed deficient. The scores recently released were in reading; results in math will be released in October.

This year, four groups at Corinth-Holders missed the mark: students with limited English skills, low-income students, Hispanic students and students with disabilities. Across Johnston County, students who speak English as a second language have increased five times from a decade ago. Districtwide, 13 of 35 schools failed to meet the standard for reading, but only two of those get Title I funding.

Corinth-Holders, formed by the merger of two schools in the 1920s, is a Title I school, meaning it receives federal funding because of its high population of low-income students. The enrollment is about a third white, a third black and a third Hispanic, and 69 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.

Because this is the second year in a row that the Title I school did not measure up, parents can opt to transfer their children to a school that scored higher on the federal test. Coates hopes everyone will stay put, but by Friday's deadline, she'd learned that about 50 plan to switch. On the bright side for Coates, that's less than 10 percent of the student body at the K-8 campus. Most of the transfers will be K-5 students going to River Dell Elementary, while a dozen older students will go to North Johnston Middle, and five will move to Selma Middle.

Other parents said they might have transferred their kids if there were better options — North Johnston Middle is 16 miles away and school officials said Riverwood Middle, nine miles away, is already too crowded.

“Our children are growing. ... We are not satisfied (with the results). But we are not a bad school,” Coates said, adding she didn’t need a test score to say so.

To clear the hurdle, Coates and staff plan to involve parents more, such as sending home student progress reports more frequently than what is required by the county.

But before the preliminary results were released, she is quick to point out, the school was already making plans to better itself and the students.

“A good school doesn’t wait for a test score to look at what they need to get better,” said Coates, the school's fourth principal in the last 10 years. “You're constantly analyzing and evaluating.”