Sixty percent of public schools failed to meet their progress goals under No Child Left Behind even while test scores across the state are showing steady improvement.

Education officials say the high number of schools that did not meet their goals this year reflects the increasingly unrealistic expectations of the federal No Child Left Behind law.

For the first time in three years, the benchmarks schools must reach to achieve "adequate yearly progress" were increased.

Last year 44 percent of students needed to meet proficiency expectations in reading for a school to pass. This year it was 58 percent. For math, schools needed 46 percent of students to rank as proficient, as opposed to 28 percent last year.

Because of the increase in those expectations, education officials began predicting as early as last year that many schools were not likely to meet their No Child Left Behind goals.

"We're not talking about small steps here. We're talking about huge leaps," said Glenn Hirata, head of the Department of Education's system evaluation and reporting section. "It's much more difficult now for schools to make (adequate yearly progress)," he said.

No Child Left Behind requires that schools show increasing proficiency each year until 2014, when 100 percent of students are expected to be proficient in core subjects. Schools that don't achieve adequate yearly progress for two consecutive years are subject to varying levels of sanctions that include state intervention and replacement of school staff.

This year was the second year that the DOE is using a new "grade specific" Hawai'i State Assessment, allowing what school principals and teachers say is a more accurate measure of how students are doing.

Last year officials fended off criticism that improved scores were a result of "dumbing-down" the test.

With this year's increase in benchmarks, 113 schools, or 40 percent, achieved "adequate yearly progress" as mandated by No Child Left Behind. That's down from last year, when 65 percent of the state's 282 schools met their goals.

Likewise, a total of 170 schools, or 60 percent, did not meet goals.

"As predicted, the number of schools that made adequate yearly progress decreased even with the steady improvement in student test scores," said Pat Hamamoto, DOE superintendent, in a statement. "However, the true significance of the results is our students are applying and practicing what they are being taught in the classroom," she said.

Palolo Elementary Principal Ruth Silberstein, whose school came out of sanctions last year but did not make its No Child Left Behind goals this year, said her school will have a more difficult time achieving adequate yearly progress as the expectations continue to increase.

"Principals and teachers from high risks schools like Palolo understand what I mean when I say that as long as you can maintain (the scores), that is a great feat," Silberstein said.

Silberstein pointed out that the majority of her student population comes from poverty and from immigrant families.

"You have to move inch by inch. The majority of high-risk schools have a lot of difficulty trying to reach (adequate yearly progress)," she said.

While fewer schools are meeting No Child Left Behind's list of expectations — from math and reading proficiency, to test participation, to retention and graduate rates — overall, the state's public school students are showing steady 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. Likewise, 43 percent of public school students demonstrated proficiency in math, compared to 19 percent in 2002.

Hirata told Board of Education members yesterday that the adequate yearly progress benchmarks tend to "mask" improvements that are being made in the classroom, noting that students across the state have been showing gains in test scores.

Had the benchmarks remained the same, Hirata said about 60 percent of schools would have made their goals.

"What you are seeing are incremental increases," Hirata said.

Meanwhile, as the number of schools that did not make their No Child Left Behind goals increased, the number of schools that are facing some sort of sanction under the federal law decreased.

Seven schools that were previously in restructuring, the most severe sanction, achieved adequate yearly progress for the second year in a row thereby taking them out of sanctions.

Additionally, 20 schools that were in some other sanction level are now in good standing, the DOE reported.

But getting to that point was not easy, education officials say.

"Schools have had to pretty much concentrate on math and reading at the expense of other disciplines," Hirata said.

And with No Child Left Behind's "all or nothing" approach, schools that missed the target for a specific category of students did not meet their goal. Each subgroup of students — from specific ethnicities to different income levels, to English language learners to special needs students — must meet the targets or else a school will not make adequate yearly progress.

About 24 percent, or 68 schools, failed to meet their goals because they missed the target on one or two of the 37 subgroups of students, the DOE reported.

Many board members expressed concern with No Child Left Behind's punitive approach, noting that it is often students in high risk that don't do well on tests.

"Quite often it is the kids that have the most trouble learning," said Maggie Cox. "It is very sad for a school to be called failing, when quite honestly, they are not," she said.

Lanakila Elementary, which has a majority of students from low-income families, met their goals for the second year in a row.

The school actually surpassed the targets in both reading and math, said Principal Gerianne Lee. In reading, 81 percent of Lanakila's students were proficient, compared to the goal of 58 percent. In math, 67 percent of students were proficient, compared to the goal of 46 percent.

"For our school, we know that the high results last year were not a fluke. We're maintaining that high achievement," she said.

Lanakila has created an organized system that tracks individual student progress, intervening as soon as a student is beginning to lag, said school counselor Alison Higa.

In addition to regularly assessing student progress through the school's own tests, teachers also have been performing day-to-day assessments and putting students into "intervention groups" if they need extra help.