Oregon Public Broadcasting

Preliminary school performance ratings from the 'No Child Left Behind' law were released Monday. Oregon's public schools saw modest improvements in math and reading.

Under the law, each state has to grade its schools each year -- to identify which ones are getting better and which ones aren't.  72 percent of Oregon's schools met the federal standard for 'Adequate Yearly Progress' this year -- that's two percent more than last year.

Susanne Smith with the Oregon Education Department says most of the improvements were seen in middle and high schools.

Susanne Smith: "We do think that a lot of the work we've done, the system changes that we've worked on with our school districts are finally starting to come to fruition."

The aim of the 'No Child Left Behind' law is to get schools to improve their test scores in math and reading.

Smith says the sanctions are tough for the schools that don't.

Susanne Smith: "The first year, schools must notify the parents of not meeting their designation and then the district has to pay transportation costs for students to attend a different school.  The second year, school have to provide students with academic help, so outside tutoring from another agency like Sylvan or YMCA. And then as a school is on the improvement list for a longer period of time, faces tougher sanctions like having to rewrite their curriculum, shake-up their staff, change their leadership."

Schools do receive additional federal funding for such shake-ups. But ultimately, the federal government could shut a school down completely if it kept failing.

That hasn't happened in Oregon so far.

But some school districts have performed better than others.

In Portland, for example, nearly 80 percent of schools met performance ratings. But district spokesman, Matt Shelby, says they're not resting on their laurels.

Matt Shelby: "You know we're happy with our progress up until point. But it's going to get more challenging each year now until 2014."

2014 is when all children have to show the math and language skills appropriate to their grade level. Next year, 70 percent of a schools will have to meet the requirement. In 2012 that'll go up to 80 percent and every year after that another 10 percent is required until 2014.

Critics say that goal is simply unattainable.