By JOSEPH B. NADEAU

PROVIDENCE — Rhode Island public schools are continuing to show improvements in student performance but will have to work harder still to meet goals set under federal school reform legislation.

That was the message Gov. Donald Carcieri gave Wednesday at the Anthony Carnevale Elementary School while announcing the findings of New Common Assessment Program (NECAP) testing conducted last fall in grades 3 to 8 and grade 11.
The elementary schools continued to show the fastest improvement, but there was also progress shown in some areas at both the middle school and elementary level, according to Carcieri.
Student Mathematics skills once again proved to the stumbling block to significant progress at the high school level and prompted Carcieri to call for a greater focus on math learning as a continuing problem.
The Carnevale school was selected as the site to announce the results because of the school’s success in achieving improvement in both English Language Arts and Mathematics, the governor told the gathering.
Last fall marked the fifth round of testing for Rhode Island under NECAP, Carcieri noted. The program is unique, he said, because it is now used in four New England states, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine, and applies the same set of standards and a common assessment to track student progress in those states.
“The good news is that for the fifth year in a row we continue to improve,” Carierci told the assembled educators, state officials and media in the school’s library while noting the five years of testing conducted for grades 3-8 under the program.
The most recent test results show 70 percent of Rhode Island students in the elementary and middle school grades to be proficient in reading, Carcieri said. 
 The testing also found 58-percent of those students to be proficient in math, a result representing only a slight increase over last year, Carcieri said.
 But while the schools are showing improvement year after year, Carcieri said the results are also telling educators that more work will have to be done and be done quicker to achieve the high level of student proficiency set under federal No Child Left Behind school reforms.
“We clearly have to push them up faster because that’s the only way we can get to 100 percent proficiency by 2013,” he said.
The federal reform law set that year as the deadline for maximizing student achievement across the board and Carcieri said the annual progress needed to meet the goals is “pretty significant.” The state, he added, “is not on that pace now.”
 A lesson in making such progress could be learned from the staff at Carnevale where reading proficiency increased 61 percent, a jump of 17 points over last year, Carcieri said.
 That represents the largest increase in proficiency for any school in the results, he said. The school also had 55 percent of its students proficient in math, a result representing a 16 percent gain over the previous year.
 “That doesn’t come without a lot of hard work, I know that,” Carcieri said. The school achieved its results in part due to high student attendance, and low rates of tardiness, he said. Students are in school at Carnevale each day and every day, he said. “And it is clear learning is taking place here at Carnevale Elementary School,” Carcieri said.
 Carcieri commended Providence School Department Superintendent Tom Brady and Carnevale Principal Mary-Ellen Boisclair, both attending the announcement, for the school’s achievement as he did its staff.
“This is a great story, it really is, and I wish I could say we could duplicate this,” he said.
 The high school results for 11th grade, tested since 2007, were mixed again this year.
 The state-wide average for reading proficiency, 73 percent, was up four points from last year, and the high school writing tests showed 55 percent of their students to be proficient in that skill, an improvement of 13 points over last year.
 The “disappointment,” Carcieri said, was the area of math skills where only 27 percent of high school students in grade 11 were found to be proficient on that testing.
 The math results remained constant over two previous years of state testing and caused officials to initially question the test itself, Carcieri said.
But the educators who wrote the test in the participating states could not see a cause from the assessment and the state has concluded more work needs to be done in the classroom to achieve the math standards.
 “So there is a disconnect, obviously, with what we are assessing, what’s on that test, and what is happening in the classroom,” he said. “That’s where we have to have more focus, more attention and more improvement,” Carcieri said.
 The latest round of testing also held good news in that the state’s high school reading scores matched New Hampshire and surpassed those of Maine and Vermont, the Governor said.
 Rhode Island’s high school writing scores were the best of all three states, he said.
 To help drive better skills in Math, Carcieri said he is asking Commissioner of Education Deborah Gist to research the success that nearby Massachusetts has had in that area and see if its techniques and instruction methods could be adopted here.
 The governor also announced the new data on graduation rates statewide, up 1.6 percent over last year to 75.5 percent, but added that it also remains a target requiring further work.
 Some schools again showed higher progress than others in reaching improvement in the graduation rate, according the governor.
 Rogers High School was up 10 points over last year with a four-year cohort graduation rate of 75.9 percent, and Bristol-Warren High School up to 80.4 percent from 80 percent last year, he said.
Carcieri and Commissioner of Education Deborah Gist also outlined the state’s efforts to win a $126 million Race to the Top federal education grant to help continue the state’s school improvement work. Gist had special praise for the Providence Teachers Union for taking a bold step in supporting the state’s application and signing the required memorandum of agreement.  The union’s support will help make the state’s application competitive with the 44 other states applying, according to the officials.
 State Board of Regents Chairman Robert G. Flanders also attended the test results gathering and commended the work being done to improve statewide student performance.
 Charts detailing the results for each school in the state can be accessed at www.ride.ri.gov.