The schools that have fallen short and stand to be restructured will be notified Tuesday, said state schools superintendent Pat Hamamoto. She declined to say how many schools will be affected as the federal law's most substantial remedies are used here for the first time.

But for schools that are taken over, the state will begin to make decisions regarding curriculum and delivery of instruction, she said.

No school personnel will be removed or replaced in the first stage of the reorganization, but some responsibilities will shift as decision-making moves to regional superintendents or private education service providers.

In some schools, programs such as art and music will be cast aside and replaced by "a double dose of math and reading," Hamamoto said.

Since the DOE is still reviewing mid-year assessment results, schools do not know whether their efforts to boost achievement have been successful enough to earn them a reprieve.

As a result, the March 1 deadline for these schools to make "significant progress" has loomed large, and many principals and teachers can't help being discouraged by the prospect of takeover after working hard to boost student performance.

"It's not like the school hasn't been doing anything," said Myron Monte, principal of Dole Middle School in Kalihi, which has met the overall standards, but has not been able to get its special education and English as a Second Language learners to proficiency. Given the nature of the students, schools have been successful, "but in spite of being successful, they've fallen into the situation where you cannot do anything about it," he said.

While Monte thinks that bringing in an outside program could have benefits for the school as a whole, he does not see any program ever being able to bring all students up to proficiency, which is the goal of the No Child Act by 2014.

"What is that miracle pill?" he asked. "What is it you have to do? Do you have to run school 16 hours a day? Nobody has that magic potion."

Under the act students are defined in a number of subpopulations such as ethnicity, poverty levels, English proficiency or special education needs.

Having already conceded that adequate yearly progress for every subpopulation is out of reach, Dole is striving for "safe harbor," which will allow schools to avoid takeover if they can get their struggling subpopulations to improve by 10 percent. "It doesn't get you out of restructuring, but it puts you in a holding pattern," Monte explained.

The DOE will figure out by tomorrow which schools will be given safe harbor and will begin notifying schools. The list will be made public Thursday at a Board of Education meeting.

Hamamoto said the schools most likely to be taken over are those that have not implemented a standards-based curriculum with consistency, lack a common focus on what everyone should be doing, have not implemented mid-year assessments to make sure their students are on track or have weak leadership.

"Traditionally poor-performing schools are having a tough time," she said.

While some districts nationwide have gone in and replaced entire school staffs — the severest remedy available under No Child — Hamamoto does not intend to do any wholesale reconstitution, which would be difficult anyway given the state's teacher shortage.

The three possible service providers that will be brought in to help some schools — Edison Schools, ETS Pulliam, or the National Center on Education and the Economy — are all Mainland-based organizations that provide educational reform models and management strategies to individual schools.

The service providers will be on campus full-time so that problems can be addressed as soon as they arise, according to Kathy Kawaguchi, assistant superintendent of the state Board of Education.

"This is not to be looked at as punishing the teachers or students or principals," Kawaguchi said. "We're trying to provide comprehensive support for the school on a sustained basis."

But schools just don't know what will happen come Tuesday.

"Restructuring is a possibility, but the school is working real hard to develop programs," said Sandra Haiku, a vice principal at Pahoa High and Intermediate School on the Big Island.

"There's been a lot of initiatives done to assist the kids," she said. "That's why we're all here: to help the students in their learning. It's a long, involved process and we are working very hard on it."

Theodore Fisher, principal of Ka'ala Elementary School in Wahiawa said he was very happy with his students' 2004 Hawai'i State Assessment results, but that more improvement is needed.

"We increased our reading scores by 20 percent. On the math scores, we showed reduced gains, but we did show the gains. So it indicated to us that what we were trying to do was kicking in, so to speak. So we felt good about it, and that it was showing us that we should continue on in terms of the direction we were going."

Math scores for low-income students are a key area where improvement must be made, he said.

"I think one of the concerns that a lot of principals have is that there are a lot of variables that we don't have any control over, such as school attendance, tardiness, and the ability of parents to follow up in terms of homework and other educational things that need to be covered at home," Fisher said. "Depending on the area you're in, there's going to be greater challenges, economically speaking. All the schools do the best that they can, but we realize there's a limit to how much we can do. But that doesn't mean we're not trying."

To get out of restructuring, schools have to make adequate yearly progress for two consecutive years.