AUGUSTA – It appears that Maine Learning Results has caught hold with the state’s students.

Commissioner of Education Susan A. Gendron announced Tuesday that not only have Maine Educational Assessment scores for elementary mathematics increased for the third successive year, a “significant jump” also occurred in the percent of students who meet Maine’s Learning Results performance expectations.

According to the latest figures, 39 percent of fourth-grade pupils met the Learning Results standards in mathematics during the past school year, compared to 28 percent of fourth-graders the year before. For eighth-graders, 29 percent met the math standards as opposed to 17 percent during the prior year.

“We’re really looking at a real difference in performance,” Horace P. Maxcy, the Department of Education’s MEA coordinator, said Tuesday. “I think it’s taken a bit longer in Learning Results, but now we are seeing real progress.”

The Learning Results was instituted in the 1998-99 school year, and for the first four years the progress curve was minuscule, said Maxcy. He attributed the recent gains to adjustments in school curriculums and programs.

Mathematics scores on the MEA tests showed gains during the past school year, as well. In those statewide figures, the department reported that MEA math scores averaged a 3 percent increase for fourth-graders and a 2 percent increase for eighth-graders. It was the third year in a row the MEA math scores registered an increase.

“Last year we saw the beginning of what we hoped would be an improvement in math scores and now we’re looking at three consecutive years of improvement in grades four and eight,” said Maxcy. “My expectation is that we will continue to see an improvement in performance.”

The test results also recorded a corresponding drop in the percentage of students who ranked in the lowest performance category in mathematics. The improved results in the “does not meet standards” category were termed “gratifying,” according to a press release issued by Commissioner Gendron.

Department of Education figures indicated that the percentage of fourth-graders who fell into the lowest performance category declined from 28 percent of pupils in the 2003-04 school year to 14 percent last year. In grade eight, the number of pupils in the low performance category declined from 32 percent to 27 percent.

At the high school level, grade 11 math scores remained stable last year, showing a 2 percent gain over the year before. More encouraging to the department was the 8 percent decline of high school students in the lowest performance category. That decline was measured over a three-year period.

Reading and writing scores across grades four, eight and 11 varied by no more than a percentage point up or down over the same three-year period, according to the department.

Still, 53 percent of fourth-grade pupils now meet the Learning Result performance standards in reading and writing compared to 49 percent the year before. In addition, the percent of fourth-grade pupils in the lowest performance category has dropped to 7 percent of all students.

Females outperformed males in each grade.

Science performance was up 2 percent in grade eight and continued to hold stable in grades four and 11. The majority of the state’s students scored in the “partially meets the standards” category, with 71 percent of grade four pupils and 60 percent of grade eight and 11 students.

During the past school year, MEA tests were taken by 14,328 grade four pupils, 16,551 grade eight pupils, and 15,703 grade 11 students. The tests are developed to measure the performance of students in reading, writing, mathematics and science-technology in achieving the expectations of Learning Results. The department provides each school department with a summary report of its students’ test results.

“When you do a statewide assessment you document what is happening year to year,” said Maxcy. “All of these things are encouraging.”

The scores also are important because they are used by the state to determine whether a school has made what is known as adequate yearly progress under the federal No Child Left Behind law.