PROVIDENCE — Little has changed for the state’s urban schools. The latest round of school classifications, released yesterday, show urban districts again in need of state intervention, having failed to make enough progress on state tests for multiple years.

It’s a chronic problem the districts and the state Department of Education have been unable to fix, and now deep cuts in staffing and budgets further hamper the state agency’s ability to aid the worst-performing districts.

Yesterday at the State House, the state released the annual classifications — the first time in several years all public schools were included in one report — which brought mixed news. Nearly three-quarters of the schools made “adequate yearly progress” in 2007-2008 as required by the federal government, but urban schools fared significantly worse than suburban schools. And the state’s four main urban districts — Providence, Central Falls, Pawtucket and Woonsocket — continue to need state intervention.

Providence is in its seventh year of state intervention, meaning its students have failed to show proficiency — or enough progress toward proficiency — in reading, writing and math tests administered each October in grades 3 through 8 and grade 11. Central Falls, Pawtucket and Woonsocket are in their sixth year.

West Warwick, North Providence and East Providence, so-called urban ring communities, were placed on intervention for the fourth, second and first year, respectively. Five suburban districts — Coventry, Cumberland, North Kingstown, Portsmouth and Warwick — were placed on watch status. To show adequate yearly progress, various student groups in each school, such as Hispanic, low-income and English language learners, must improve on the tests each year. If more than one group fails to improve, the district is placed on the intervention list.

In all, 12 of the state’s 36 districts failed to make adequate yearly progress.

Officials said yesterday that they are focusing efforts on the urban districts that have struggled the longest. But they acknowledged the state’s fiscal crisis means less help from the state Education Department. The department’s budget was slashed by 12 percent and more than a dozen staffers have left over the past year, including Mary Canole, who headed the department’s intervention effort.

“We are going through a tough time as a state.… But we have tried to hold education support steady,” said Governor Carcieri. “At the end of the day, the role of the Department of Education is limited. We need the districts to do the job.”

When a district is placed on the intervention list, the Department of Education sends a team to meet with district administrators to identify and solve problems. In some cases, the team helps the district find federal money to support changes. In the case of Providence, the department allocates $600,000 in state money, and in Central Falls, the University of Rhode Island is helping the district make changes.

Peter McWalters, the state education commissioner, said the department will continue to meet with the struggling districts, but said there is less manpower to run workshops and provide training.

STUDENTS IN 73 percent of the state’s 304 public schools performed well enough on state tests last year to ensure their schools made “adequate yearly progress,” a dip of seven percentage points from last year. The decrease was not surprising.

In accordance with the federal education law known as No Child Left Behind, Rhode Island makes it tougher for a school to be classified as making adequate yearly progress every three years. This year the bar was raised by several points at each level — elementary, middle and high school. Test scores were released earlier this year.

In addition, significant achievement gaps persist among urban, urban ring and suburban schools. For example, just 50 percent of urban elementary schools showed enough progress among various student groups, while 91 percent of suburban schools and 94 percent of so-called urban ring schools did so. The urban ring consists of Cranston, East Providence, Johnston, Newport, North Providence, Warwick and West Warwick.

At the middle school level, 42 percent of urban schools made the grade, compared with 85 percent of urban ring schools, and 79 percent of suburban schools. The gap is biggest in high school, with 75 percent of suburban schools making progress, 18 percent of urban ring schools, and 17 percent of urban schools.

“The Regents will continue to focus on high school reform,” said Robert G. Flanders Jr., chairman of the Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education. “Our final goal is to have all students in all schools reach proficiency.”

The classifications also brought good news.

Eight schools and one district were removed from intervention status: Middletown High School; Ponaganset High School, in the Foster-Glocester Regional School District; Curtis Memorial School in Pawtucket; Lima Elementary, Fortes Academy, Laurel Hill Avenue, Windmill Elementary and Nathanael Greene Middle School, all in Providence; and South Kingstown.

At Fortes, where 94 percent of the 480 students are eligible for free or reduced lunch, principal Lori Hughes said teachers now spend more time preparing students for the test and target students who were just below proficiency in the previous test.

At Middletown High, principal Steven S. Ruscito said special education students met the state standard in math for the first time in three years, improving the school’s outcome. “There is no magic pill and we continue to very cautiously look at data,” Ruscito said. “But we did a curriculum revision, prompted by the fact that a segment of our population was not getting the courses they needed to prepare for the test.”

South Kingstown, a high-performing district that had struggled to help low-income and special-education students meet the state standard, doubled its efforts to provide math support and ensure that students with disabilities spent most of their day in regular classrooms, said School Superintendent Robert A. Hicks.Education divide

Nearly three-quarters of the state’s 304 public schools made adequate yearly progress on the annual state tests in 2007-2008. But performance varied significantly among urban, urban ring and suburban schools.

jjordan@projo.com