Sixty percent of Hawaii's public schools failed to meet their progress goals under No Child Left Behind even while test scores across the state are showing solid improvement, according to annual testing results released by the state Department of Education today.

Education officials are currently meeting with the state Board of Education to discuss this year's NCLB results.

For the first time in three years, the benchmarks that schools are expected to achieve in order to meet "adequate yearly progress" were increased. Proficiency expectations in reading went from 44 percent last year to 58 percent this year. In math, schools were expected to have 46 percent proficiency, as opposed to 28 percent last year.

Because of the increase in those expectations, education officials had been predicting as early as last year that many schools were not likely to meet their NCLB goals.

With the increase in benchmarks, 113 schools, or 40 percent, achieved "adequate yearly progress" as mandated by NCLB. That's down from last year, when 65 percent of the state's 282 schools met their goals.

A total of 170 schools, or 60 percent, did not meet goals this year.

While fewer schools met the increased expectations under NCLB, the state's public school students are showing steady and solid improvement in math and reading test scores since testing began in 2002.

About 62 percent of public school students are proficient in reading. That compares to 39 percent when testing first began in 2002. And 43 percent of public school students demonstrated proficiency in math, compared to 19 percent in 2002.