In a memo this week to school principals and complex-area superintendents, state schools superintendent Pat Hamamoto indicated that troubled schools that do not meet their goals on the annual tests can demonstrate progress through monthly student assessments starting this month. Schools will have to show by December that they are reducing the number of targeted students who were not proficient in math and reading by at least 10 percent, the same challenge the superintendent has issued to all schools by the end of the school year.

The DOE estimates that nearly 70 schools are in the most risk under No Child Left Behind, including 25 schools that were identified by state intervention teams last spring. Schools can be restructured or even taken over by the state if they consistently fail to meet the law's requirements.

No Child Left Behind requires schools to make annual progress toward having all students proficient by 2014. Rather than rely solely on the results of the state's proficiency tests, the DOE is trying to give schools alternative methods to capture student progress and avoid potential sanctions.

"Otherwise, it's just unrealistic," said Elaine Takenaka, the educational administrative services director at the DOE.

Overall, students in the third, fifth, eighth and 10th grades scored higher last school year on the Hawai'i State Assessment than students who took the tests the year before, a small yet promising rebound for educators unhappy with previous scores.

But the DOE is now going through the more complicated process of determining whether schools met No Child Left Behind and how many might have to offer students tutoring or the option of transferring to other schools.

In general, at least 30 percent of all students — along with several subgroups of students — at each school had to be proficient in reading last school year, while 10 percent had to be proficient in math. The benchmarks gradually increase over several years until all students are expected to be proficient.

"For the most part, our scores are positive," said Selvin Chin-Chance, who oversees testing at the DOE. "If it had gone up a huge amount in one year, we would have been worried. But you really don't want to see it start going the other way."

Several of the schools on the state intervention list made significant improvements that school administrators attributed to years of hard work. Intervention teams arrived at the schools right around the time students took the state tests last spring and their advice was not expected to have an immediate effect on test scores.

At Nanakuli Elementary School, 35 percent of third-graders were proficient in reading last school year, up from 13.5 percent the year before. Twenty-one percent of third-graders were proficient in math, up from 2.7 percent. Among fifth-graders, 41 percent were proficient in reading, up from 15.1 percent, while 10 percent were proficient in math, up from 6.6 percent.

"We're getting better at being focused on the state's standards, and our teachers worked very hard," said Wendy Takahashi, who took over as principal this school year. "We were tired of hearing bad news. We thought our children were doing better, but we just couldn't show it before."

At Nanakuli High and Intermediate School, students in eighth and 10th grades made gains in reading and math that will likely not meet federal benchmarks but still give school administrators some satisfaction. Levi Chang, the school's principal, said counselors and teachers explained to students that the tests may not matter to their grades but can influence their school's standing.

"We kind of shared our situation with them," said Chang, who added that the intervention team made it clear to staff that expectations of higher performance are real. "I think what it did was bring attention to the fact that this wasn't going away."

Other schools, however, were disappointed. At Laupahoehoe High and Elementary School on the Big Island, scores plummeted in third-grade reading and math, went up slightly in fifth grade, were off in eighth grade, and were mixed in 10th grade, moving up in reading but falling in math. The school was one of several in Hawai'i working with a Mainland business consultant who tracked several key indicators throughout the year with the intent of raising performance.

"That was the most disappointing thing I've ever seen," the school's new principal, Cheryl Merk, said of the test scores. "But I'm very hopeful. We're attacking it from day one this year."