While there was improvement statewide, more local schools failed to make sufficient achievement advances as outlined by the federal No Child Left Behind Act, according to data released Tuesday by the Indiana Department of Education.

Signed into law in 2002, No Child Left Behind requires schools to make Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP, toward 100 percent student proficiency in math and English/language arts by 2014.

"Indiana schools are making important gains in some areas," said Suellen Reed, the state’s superintendent of public instruction, "but progress still remains to be seen in others."

Statewide, 54 percent of schools managed to meet AYP, up from 52 percent last year. There was also improvement at the district level with 84 percent of school corporations meeting AYP as compared to 79 percent in 2007.

To achieve AYP, schools must show significant testing improvement in a variety of subgroups that include race, socio-economic status, special or general education and English Language Learners.

If any subgroup of 30 or more students fails to meet AYP at a fixed rate for all subgroups based on Indiana's ISTEP-plus testing, the entire school fails.

Education experts have argued for years that the law places an unfair burden on more diverse, urban school corporations or districts.

The South Bend Community School Corp. currently has 32 schools. Only six achieved AYP, down from eight last year and 13 in 2006.

"It’s pretty much what we expected," said Robert L. Zimmerman, superintendent of South Bend public schools. "It continues to be challenge for us."

South Bend schools that made AYP this year include Hay Primary, LaSalle Intermediate Academy, Hamilton Primary, Kennedy Primary Academy, McKinley Primary and Tarkington Traditional.

Three of those are magnet schools.

While all schools are charted for No Child Left Behind requirements, the law’s consequences for failing to meet AYP are limited to Title I schools.

A Title I school is one that is allocated federal money based on the percentage of poor students enrolled there.

In Elkhart, LaPorte, Marshall and St. Joseph counties, a total of 29 Title I schools are into school improvement status.

In South Bend alone, 10 of its 13 Title I schools are in improvement status.

"The thing that so many people don’t understand is that we are expecting so much more from the teachers and the kids than we ever have in the past," Zimmerman said. "We still have more kids graduating and more kids doing well than we ever have. But, we’ve never had this level of expectation."

A school enters Year I improvement status if it fails to make AYP for two consecutive years.

Five of the corporation’s schools — Perley, Muessel, Wilson, Madison and Harrison — are all entering Year 3 improvement status.

Year 3 improvement status is a corrective action phase. The corporation must either replace relevant staff there, implement new curriculum, significantly decrease management authority in the school, appoint an outside expert to advise the school, extend the school day or year, or restructure the school’s internal organization.

Consequences of previous school improvement status years include offering school choice, development of an improvement plan, professional development, technical assistance and offering of supplemental education services.

State education officials already have come to South Bend to evaluate its curriculum, Zimmerman said. Now they are evaluating how well that curriculum is administered in the individual classrooms through the Surveys of Enacted Curriculum project. It uses research-based tools that help schools collect, report and use data on what content is taught and how it is taught.

Zimmerman said he also is beginning to review improvement plans already submitted by individual school administrators.

"Obviously, there is no quick and easy answer to any of this," Zimmerman said. "We’ve just got to continue to work at it."

Year 4 improvement status requires a corporation to prepare to carry out a plan for alternative governance of the school.

Elkhart Community Schools has two schools in Year 4 status and Concord Community Schools one.

There were some near AYP misses in South Bend.

Darden, Nuner and Wilson primaries only missed by one category. At Darden and Nuner, it was special education English/language arts. At Wilson it was black students in math.

Washington High School only missed making AYP by two categories, special education math and English/language arts.

Special education is the most commonly missed target among schools.

"While all this stuff is important, we try not to lose sight of the fact we’re educating children in a variety of ways," Zimmerman said. "This is just one segment of what we’re trying to accomplish."