Readers who look at our annual stories on public school test scores might be forgiven for wondering just how well our children are doing in the classroom.

Our story last month said "despite steady gains in statewide math and reading test scores, especially among middle and high school students, a record number of schools this year (66 percent) failed to meet their progress goals under the No Child Left Behind law."

In 2008, the story was just about the same: "Sixty percent of public schools failed to meet their progress goals under No Child Left Behind even while test scores across the state are showing steady improvement."

Education reporter Loren Moreno did a preview story a few days before the new scores came out in July headlined "Schools see 'great strides' " and in it, he mentioned both the improved test scores and the further sanctions that were expected on schools not meeting "adequate yearly progress" under No Child Left Behind.

"It is at times frustrating," principal Wade Araki of Benjamin Parker Elementary School said in that article. "When you see it on the front page of the paper, the community and kids don't feel good about it. The fact is, they've made great strides."

As the one most responsible for what goes on the front page, I often question what really needs to be emphasized in these test-score stories. On the one hand, our schools are bound by No Child Left Behind standards and each state sets its own academic proficiency for adequate yearly progress. On the other, schools are measured within 37 subgroups — income levels, special-needs students, specific ethnicities, etc. — and failing in any subgroup means the entire school fails.

Yet our stories are filled with all the different measurements and full-page charts that show whether schools have met AYP standards, what No Child Left Behind sanctions have been imposed, the percentage of schools that are succeeding, failing and restructuring and a grade-by-grade tally of how students did on the Hawai'i State Assessment.

For Dan Woods, who for many years served as our education editor, the real news in our latest story on the Hawai'i State Assessment scores was found in the 15th paragraph of the story.

It said 65 percent of public school students are proficient in reading, up from 39 percent when testing began in 2002. About 44 percent of students tested proficient in math, up from 19 percent in 2002.

"The longer I served as education editor, the more I became convinced while both those numbers — AYP, and progress in math and reading scores — are important, the bottom line is how many students in Hawai'i are proficient in math and reading," Woods said.

He pointed out, of course, that all this means that one-third of public school students are not proficient in reading and more than half lack proficiency in math.

"Those are failing numbers in any classroom and is the real-world check on all those numbers and percentages and claims of progress," he said.

We all know that No Child Left Behind, requiring that 100 percent of students be proficient by 2014, is too high of a hurdle. But it is the standard and we have to report on progress that is — or is not — made. Based on that measuring stick, more and more schools will struggle and the state will have to bring in more resources to help those hurting schools.

The headlines are probably not going to get better, but giving the full context of how our students have improved — and they have improved substantially — is only fair.