PORTLAND - Across Oregon, more than 360 schools have been told they need to improve their students' performance on test scores, or face a range of consequences mandated by the federal government.

That is about 30 percent of all the public schools in the state, according to the Oregon Department of Education.

Of those schools, 139 are high schools, including every single high school in Portland, Corvallis, Bend and Salem, and all but one in Eugene and Medford. Seventy-six of the remaining schools are elementary schools, while 117 are middle schools or junior high schools, according to a count by The Associated Press, while 30 of them are combined grade schools. Scores still need to be finalized on a handful of other schools.

And although the bulk of schools designated as "needing improvement," are in Oregon's urban areas in the Willamette Valley, only four counties in the state are so far without any such schools: Sherman, Wallowa, Gilliam and Baker, all rural counties east of the Cascades.

The designations were made under President Bush's signature education law, dubbed, "No Child Left Behind." The law requires schools to test students every year from grades 3 to 8, and demonstrate that rising percentages of children are scoring at or above target levels on reading and math tests.

If test scores don't rise, schools face a series of consequences. Schools that fail two years in a row would have to pay transportation costs for students who want to transfer. After six years of stagnation, teachers and principals could lose their jobs.

The catch, school officials say, is in the way scores are considered: student performance is broken down by categories, including by ethnic group, poverty level, physical and mental handicaps, and English-speaking ability. If even one of those groups falls below testing targets, the entire school will bear the consequences.

This year, only about 40 percent of students were required to score at or above proficiency levels on reading and math tests for a school to avoid being tagged with the "needs improvement" label. But by 2014, 100 percent of students will be expected to meet the targets.

"Showing some growth from year to year is realistic, but meeting a 100-percent goal is, I think, unrealistic," said Judy Graham, superintendent of the Lake County school district, where the single high school did not meet its targets. "We have some severely handicapped students, as does every district in Oregon probably, and my golly, I just don't think it is possible at all."

Statewide, most schools on the list were there because of the performance of students with disabilities and children who don't speak English, said Gene Evans, a spokesman for the Oregon Department of Education.

Last year, about 8,600 schools nationwide were listed as needing improvement, but only a small handful of them were in Oregon. The numbers jumped so dramatically this year because more schools started reporting data broken down by subgroup, officials said.

The list now includes some of the state's best-regarded high schools in its wealthiest enclaves, including Lincoln High in Portland, Lake Oswego High School and Ashland High School.

Juli Di Chiro, superintendent of schools in Ashland, said the only reason that her high school was on the list was because of an error, because students who had withdrawn from school were not taken out of the testing pool.

She's all for accountability, Di Chiro said, but some areas of No Child Left Behind give her pause. For example, as soon as children learn to speak English they are moved out of that category, as are special education students.

"There's always going to be a group of kids who are learning English, who do not yet have the facility to score along with their age-level peers," she said. "Because of such things, most schools will eventually not be able to demonstrate adequate yearly progress and I don't think that is healthy."

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- AP Writer Fawn Porter contributed to this report