When Wilson Elementary School Principal Nelson Togerson came on board three years ago, he inherited a school with low test scores and students he knew could do better.

He immediately focused on proven interventions to turn the school around.

As a result, Wilson's Academic Performance Index rating climbed a whopping 78 points from the 2006-07 school year to the 2008-09 school year.

Still, the school was recently designated as one of the lowest-performing schools in the state, leaving the principal and staff unsure of what comes next.

"The state created this formula for low-performing schools for the purposes of Race to the Top, looking at five years of API, instead of just looking at the last three years

Fifth-grader Daniel Rivera, right, works on a school project during math class at Wilson Elementary in San Bernardino on Wednesday. (Gabriel Luis Acosta/Staff Photographer)
of improvement," Togerson said. "So we were identified for corrective action."

Wilson is one of 11 schools in the San Bernardino City Unified School District and 188 statewide that made the list released in March.

The list was compiled using a three-year average proficiency rate for English-language arts and mathematics and progress on the state's Academic Performance Index, or API.

Schools that gained 50 points or more on the API growth score over the last five years or met the statewide goal of 800 during the last school year were deemed to have shown enough progress and were not included.

The designations require school districts to implement one of four corrective actions at each school to obtain $500,000 to $2 million in grant money. All of the options require replacing the principals, and one also calls for replacing at least half the teachers. Schools can also