Failing charter districts   Of 129 charter owners in Maricopa County for which data are available, 37 did not meet federal learning goals, called Adequate Yearly Progress. They are listed below.   Academy of Arizona   Academy with Community Partners   Air Academy Charter HS   Ball Charter School (Hearn)   Bell Canyon Charter School   C.I. Wilson Academy   C.I. Wilson Academy II   Carden Elementary School   Career Success Schools   Deer Valley Charter Schools   E-Institute Charter Schools   East Valley Youth and Family Support Centers   Estrella Public Charter High School dba Estrella Public HS   Future Development Education & Performing Arts Academy   Jefferson Patriots Inc., dba Thomas Jefferson HS   Life School College Preparatory   Midtown Primary School   Nobel Learning Communities   OMEGA SCHOOLS dba Omega Academy   Peoria Accelerated Public Charter HS   Phoenix Advantage Charter School   Phoenix School of Academic Excellence   Pointe Educational Services   Precision Academy Systems   Premier Charter HS   Primavera Technical Learning Center   Salt River Pima-Maricopa Community Schools   Scottsdale Horizons Charter School   Sequoia Charter School   Skyline Technical HS   Sonoran Desert School   Success School   Sun Valley Public Charter Middle School   Tertulia: A Learning Community   Valley Vocational Services   Victory HS   Westwind Middle School Academy

In October, the state didn't label any of Mesa's schools "underperforming," and honored 13 schools as "excelling," but on Friday Arizona's largest school district failed to pass federal education standards.

State officials call the district standards tough, even unfair, but also helpful in finding individual students who need the most help.

Mesa is hardly in bad company. It joins more than half of the Valley's districts that failed to make what the feds called Adequate Yearly Progress, including Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, Chandler and Phoenix's Alhambra and Washington districts.

Statewide, about 40 percent of traditional districts and a third of charter owners failed to bring all their students up to federal standards.

Barb Mozdzen, a mother of three who lives in Chandler, said there must be something wrong with the federal standards, because there's nothing wrong with her children's schools. Mozdzen has one Chandler graduate, a high-schooler and an elementary student.

"I'm stunned," Mozdzen said. "I look at what my kids are learning and I say: 'Wow.' I have faith in this district."

Arizona schools chief Tom Horne urged parents to rely on the state, not the federal government, for an accurate picture of their neighborhood schools.

"This illustrates that parents need to focus on the state labels to determine how well their children's schools are doing," Horne said. "Regardless of which system one focuses on, the important thing is that the schools will be required to bring students to proficiency in reading, writing and mathematics."

So why did some of Arizona's best districts get labeled inadequate by federal education officials?


• Federal standards require entire districts to improve AIMS reading and math scores, a state test taken in third, fifth and eighth grades and in high school. The feds also measure the districts on attendance and graduation rates. But here's the sticking point: The feds require district students in eight separate student groups to meet the standards. The groups include five ethnic groups: African-American, White, Latino, Asian and Native American. The other three groups are students learning English, students living in poverty and special-education students.


• If any of these groups, in any grade, are lagging in test scores, attendance or high school graduation rates, the entire district fails to make Adequate Yearly Progress.

So, in Mesa, eighth-grade English language learners didn't score high enough on the eighth-grade AIMS math test to keep the district from failing. Paradise Valley testing director Roger Freeman said they're also struggling to improve eighth-grade AIMS scores.

"It does help us identify some of our weakest and strongest areas so we can target them," Freeman said.