SANTA FE
Fewer New Mexico's schools reached targets for improving academic performance and student participation standards this year than in 2006, the Public Education Department said Friday.

A total of 464 schools, or 58 percent, missed the goal of making "adequate yearly progress" under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. About 334 percent, or 42 percent, achieved the objective.

Last year, 367 schools met the state-established targets for improving student achievement and 433 schools, or 54 percent, didn't.

Schools are evaluated mainly on student performance and participation in math and reading tests administered in grades 3-9 and grade 11. Other factors in the ratings are graduation rates for high schools and attendance rates for elementary and middle schools.

Under the federal law, states are to increase their performance targets each year until 100 percent of students are proficient on tests by the 2013-14 school year.

To make the adequate yearly progress goal, for example, a school with kindergarten through 8th grade needed 45 percent of its students at proficiency or above in reading up from 41 percent last year. Twenty-four percent needed to meet the performance standard in math, up from 19 percent last year.

Those standards increase significantly next year for all schools. For example, 56 percent of students in a kindergarten-through-8th-grade school must meet the performance goal in reading and 38 percent in math in 2008.

The state not the federal government establishes the yearly goals for improving student achievement.

"Unlike some states, New Mexico did not play the game of setting low proficiency levels in order to increase numbers of schools making AYP," Education Secretary Veronica Garcia said in a statement.

However, she was critical of the federal law's approach to measuring school performance, saying the "pass/fail AYP designation does not adequately describe a school's success especially when a school is making forward progress with student proficiency."