A new national study has identified Hawai'i as one of 23 states that have chosen a "backloaded" approach to No Child Left Behind, which the report says decreases the chance of meeting the goal that all students will be proficient in reading and math by 2014.

Hawai'i, along with nearly half the country, set the bar relatively low from 2002 to 2008 for the percentage of students who would get "proficient" test scores in math and reading. The state has chosen steeper expectations from now until the 2014 deadline, when all students must be proficient in reading and math.

That's in contrast to 25 states that have chosen incremental progress toward the 100 percent goal, starting with higher goals early on.

The report, scheduled for release today by the Center on Education Policy, says the backloaded approach to achieving No Child Left Behind goals will result in higher, unreachable goals over the next several years.

"It is unclear how schools in these states will be able to produce large annual gains in the percentages of students scoring proficient" in core subjects, the report said.

State Department of Education officials yesterday defended their "stair-step" approach, saying it was designed to allow students time to get used to standards-based curriculum and testing procedures.

"This approach was focused on teaching and learning so that we can have a systemic case where learning builds upon learning in the previous years," said Cara Tanimura, head of the DOE's system planning and improvement section.

Between 2002 and 2007, the state DOE increased the expectations of the percentage of students proficient in math and reading just once. However, over the next six years, goals will increase four times.

The report argues that over the next six years students will face steeper, possibly unattainable, expectations.

Tanimura agreed that over the next several years schools will need to reach much higher expectations. For instance, she pointed out that 46 percent of students are expected to be proficient in math this year, as opposed to 28 percent last year.

However, Tanimura pointed out that the goal of 100 percent of students proficient in reading and math by 2014 will be difficult for all states to achieve, regardless of the method used.

"We're hoping for some change in the flexibility in No Child Left Behind, so it won't be so punitive. Otherwise, many schools across the country will be failing by 2014," Tanimura said.

The Center on Education Policy also acknowledged in its report that states that chose to take an incremental approach to reaching 100 percent proficiency will also have a difficult time achieving that goal.

The report says that based on recent rates of improvement, only a projected 12 to 16 states will achieve 100 percent proficiency by 2014.

The Center on Education Policy is a nonpartisan, public-policy organization based in Washington, D.C.