Almost 30,000 schools in the United States failed to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in the 2007-2008 school year. For states with comparable data for the 2006-2007 school year, the number of such schools increased by 28%. Half those schools missed their achievement goals for two or more years, putting almost one in five of the nation's public schools in some stage of a federally mandated process designed to improve student achievement. The number facing sanctions represents a 13% increase for states with comparable data over the 2006-2007 school year. The rising number of schools failing to make AYP under the law is inevitable, its critics say, because of what they see as the law's unrealistic requirement that student achievement rise on a pace so that all students are proficient in reading and math by the end of the 2013-2014 school year. However, supporters of the NCLB law say that the numbers suggest that the law has spurred many schools to take steps to improve.