Four Glenview schools failed to clear benchmarks to achieve adequate yearly progress under the federal No Child Left Behind law in 2009-10, school district officials said this week.

As a result, principals at Attea, Glen Grove, Hoffman and Pleasant Ridge schools in Glenview Public School District 34 are now required to devise action plans for bringing some students’ standardized test scores up to par in the next year.

And at Hoffman, a school that receives federal Title 1 grants to serve disadvantaged students, parents will have the option of sending their children to a different school this year.

District officials said that data trends had shown for some time that a few student subgroups might not make adequate yearly progress in 2010, and programs were put in place to prepare.

“We’ve been proactive for several years,” said Kathleen Hart, assistant superintendent for student services. “It was a real possibility some students might not meet the percentage.”

In all, schools did not meet adequate yearly progress in eight areas, the most since No Child Left Behind went into effect in 2001, Hart said.

Students with disabilities at Attea, Glen Grove, Hoffman and Pleasant Ridge did not meet benchmarks in reading, while the same group of students did not make sufficient progress in math at Attea and Glen Grove.

Low income students at Attea also did not meet academic goals, along with students with limited English proficiency at Hoffman.

The state data were provided by District 34 and presented at Monday’s board of education meeting even though the Illinois State Board of Education has not yet released the information, district officials said.

Under the federal No Child Left Behind law, states are required to measure the achievements of individual schools and school districts. Illinois uses scores on the Illinois Standards Achievement Test and the Illinois Alternative Assessment to measure progress.

Schools had high hurdles to overcome in the past year, Glenview administrators said. They attributed the adequate yearly progress data to the lofty goals. More than 77 percent of students in various subgroups had to meet or exceed standards, although smaller percentages were required for subgroups with fewer students.

District 34 is no stranger to working to improve the test scores of lower performing students. Last year, two subgroups did not make adequate yearly progress, but this year’s scores show they did.

The district has worked to bring academic intervention programs in line with assessment data, while new reading, language arts and math learning targets have been put in place.

“We have seen this has shown some nice growth for our students,” Hart said.

This year, the district and individual schools will put plans into place to further help all students, including those who are struggling.

Phil Collins, assistant superintendent for curriculum, instruction and assessment, said administrators have met and will continue to meet with principals and student service administrators to review the state date to develop action plans.

Administrators also used its release of the state data to criticize what they called a “status model” for determining achievement. They said that many of the students in the low achieving subgroups met individual academic growth targets, but that growth is not reflected in the raw test score data.

Superintendent Gerald Hill said the federal government is considering basing No Child Left Behind on a “growth model.”

But one model alone doesn’t necessarily capture an overall picture of student achievement, administrators said. A student can meet growth benchmarks but not status, and vice versa.

“It’s the power of two,” said Deputy Superintendent Michael Nicholson, who just started his job in District 34 over the summer. “You should have both.”

jdanna@tribune.com