KAILUA-KONA » Teenagers sit at a picnic table as their math teacher sketches out a navigation problem on a whiteboard propped near a plumeria tree, with the rumble of surf as his soundtrack.

The spartan campus of West Hawaii Explorations Academy, a public charter school next to Kona Airport, lives up to its motto, "No Child Left Indoors." The most substantial structure is a hollow-tile concrete pavilion workshop. Students work mostly in open-air structures with fabric roofs.

After successful appeals, four more Hawaii public schools have met “adequate yearly progress” goals under the No Child Left Behind Act.

For a school to attain NCLB goals this year on the Hawaii State Assessment, 58 percent of students had to demonstrate proficiency in reading and 46 percent had to be proficient in math.

The schools bring the total number of schools that met AYP to 145 out of 286 — or 51 percent of public schools.