PROVIDENCE — With two years of the state’s new standardized test under their belts, Rhode Island elementary and middle schools are showing impressive gains, with 171 earning the state’s top designation, “high performing,” in the latest round of school classifications — 15 more schools than last year.

Just 27 schools were categorized as making “insufficient progress” under the state’s accountability system, compared with 37 schools last year. In addition, 52 schools were listed as “moderately performing” compared with 57 schools last year, according to the Rhode Island Department of Education.

“I am very happy to report that 85 percent of schools met their performance targets this year,” Governor Carcieri said about the high and moderately performing schools. “These are the results of a process we started four years ago, to establish a statewide curriculum and put in place a new assessment system. This is a good story, built on a lot of hard work.”

(Under Rhode Island’s accountability system, a school can be considered moderately performing even if only a small percentage of its students are reading, writing and computing at grade level, as long as the school is improving test scores by 10 percent or more from the previous year. This is why some urban schools with just 25 percent of students scoring proficient in English, 9 percent proficient in writing and 22 percent proficient in math can be designated as moderately performing.)

Carcieri and education officials said the improvement in classifications reflect years of major changes in education in Rhode Island. These include establishing clear standards for each grade level, creating new statewide tests that assess whether students are meeting those standards, enhancing science and math courses, and providing more professional development to teachers.

Of particular note is the progress of the state’s four urban districts: Central Falls, Pawtucket, Providence and Woonsocket. Last year, 45 urban schools failed to make “adequate yearly progress,” meaning they failed to move enough students closer to proficiency on the state math and English tests. This year, the number of failing schools fell to 26.

Twelve urban schools that failed to make enough progress in the 2005-2006 school year did make significant strides in test scores this year, including Charles Fortes Elementary School in Providence, where Carcieri and education officials chose to release the school classifications yesterday morning. Fortes roughly doubled the percentage of students proficient in math and English this year.

Urban ring communities, Cranston, East Providence, Johnston, Newport, North Providence, Warwick and West Warwick, also improved. Ninety-four percent, or 74 schools, showed improvement among all their students groups — white, black, Hispanic, Native American, Asian, low-income, English-language learners and special education — up from 77 percent, or 61 schools.

And suburban schools also improved, with 104 schools moving all student groups closer to proficiency, up from 98 last year.

Education officials said the progress was not surprising, in part because students and teachers are now more familiar with the New England Common Assessment Program, the testing system in English and math that rolled out in October 2005, which are now aligned with the state’s grade-level expectations and curriculum.

Results from the English and math tests administered to about 69,000 students in grades 3 through 8 last fall were released in late January. The scores showed substantial gains in urban, urban ring and suburban communities and among various groups of students, including low-income, English-language learners and minorities. Statewide, 62 percent of elementary and middle school students scored proficient in reading — an increase of 4 percentage points over the 2005-2006 school year, and 53 percent were proficient in math — a 3-percentage point increase.

All students — white, black, Hispanic, Native American, Asian, low-income, English-language learners and special education — must be able to read, write and compute proficiently at their grade level by 2014, the date set by the federal government. To accomplish this, Rhode Island raises the bar for what students are expected to achieve every three years. Rhode Island created an index score, which is a complex formula that distributes points based on how students perform and computes a school average.

This year, for example, elementary schools are expected to reach an index score of 80.1 points in English and 68.1 points in math — or be moving large numbers of students toward those goals — in order to be classified as moderately performing. High-performing schools have reached or exceeded the index scores set for 2011 — 88.1 in English and 80.9 in math. (The index scores do not represent the percent of students who are proficient.)

Middle schools are expected to reach an index score of 73.3 in English and 55.1 in math this year to be classified as moderately performing and 83.9 in English and 73.1 in math to receive the high-performing designation.

Next year, the bar moves up another notch, and officials caution that the number of high performing schools will probably slip.

“By the time you have the same target for the third year in a row, you always see a lot of schools doing OK,” said Mary Ann Snider, director of assessment and accountability for the state Education Department. “But if I had to put money on it, next year you’ll see more schools missing targets.”

High school classifications, based on tests administered in March, will be released in the fall.

To see a complete list of the classifications of elementary and middle schools, go to: www.ride.ri.gov under “2007 School Performance Classifications.”

jjordan@projo.com