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math, and is based on Arizona’s College and Career Ready Standards. It is given to students in grades 3-11.

Scores are divided into four performance levels: “minimally proficient,” “partially proficient,” “proficient” and “highly proficient.” Students earn a passing score if they test proficient or above.

This year, 41 percent of Arizona students passed both the math and reading portions of the test.

White students (55 percent passing in both reading and math) and Asian students (68 percent in reading; 73 percent in math) fared better than black students (28 percent in reading; 26 percent in math) and Hispanic students (30 percent in reading; 31 percent in math).

Native American students (18 percent passing in reading; 21 percent in math) and homeless students (21 percent in reading; 22 percent in math) had among the lowest passing rates on the exam.

The AzMERIT exam is considered high-stakes because of the outsize significance it has in determining the school letter-grade rankings schools receive each year, as well as how much extra state funding is given to the best-performing schools.

The passing rates, particularly in third-grade reading, are not climbing at the rate necessary to meet the lofty goals supported by state leaders and education advocates and officials.

For example, an education non-profit set a widely supported target of 72 percent AzMERIT proficiency rate in third-grade reading. There remains a difference of 28 percentage points between that goal and the current passing rate of 44 percent.

AzMERIT and the state’s A-F school-accountability system have been criticized by all seven candidates running for state superintendent of public instruction.

Some of the candidates — Republicans Diane Douglas, Bob Branch, Jonathan Gelbart, Tracy Livingston and Frank Riggs and Democrats David Schapira and Kathy Hoffman — called the school-grading system incomplete or unfair toward schools with mostly poor students.

Others expressed support for the new “menu of assessments” law that is supposed to allow schools to use other exams — such as the ACT or SAT at the highschool level — instead of AzMERIT.