School report cards under the federal No Child Left Behind law were released Thursday, and though achievement benchmarks remained the same, fewer schools scored up to par.

"That puzzled us and we were surprised. I had initially thought we wouldn't see that much difference because the targets did not go up," said Judy Park, state testing director for the State Office of Education. "I was not anticipating that kind of difference until next year when the targets go up."

This year 18 percent of Utah schools didn't make the grade — that is, they didn't make "adequate yearly progress" under NCLB. Last year only 13 percent of schools were below par.

NCLB aims to hold schools accountable for all students to ensure every child is learning. It was designed to shine a light on areas that need some extra work and pressure teachers to focus on students who have historically lagged behind.

Under the law, all public schoolchildren, regardless of race, disability, income or English attainment, must be able to read and do math well by 2014.

Movement toward the goal is measured by AYP reports. Schools either must have enough students scoring as proficient or have moved enough students up from the bottom, and have 95 percent of students in each student group taking the tests. If one group fails, so does the entire school

Utah raises its achievement expectations every other year until it reaches the 100 percent mark. The report uses the state CRTs, or year-end tests on language arts and math, and examines students by group, separated for ethnicity, poverty, disability and English language learners.

The goal is 71 percent of third- through eighth-graders and 70 percent of 10th-graders proficient in language arts; and 64 percent of third- through eighth-graders and 47 percent of 10th- through 12th-graders scoring as proficient in math — the same goal as last year.

As a whole, most of the scores went up on the CRTs, even in subgroups.

So why the drop in the number of schools hitting the mark?

State leaders say the answer is two-fold.

Park said a safety net in the law, called "safe harbor," could account for some of the decrease in passing schools.

Under safe harbor, if a school does not make the annual goal it can be deemed as being in "safe harbor" if it has shown a 10 percent reduction in the percent of students who are not proficient over the previous year.

"But with each year a school makes safe harbor it makes it a little more difficult the next year to improve that much," said Clyde Mason, testing director for Jordan School District. "It would be increasingly difficult for a school that is not making the goal each successive year to continue to make that 10 percent."