Despite years of prodding from officials at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) to bolster athletes' performance in the classroom, nearly 10 percent of all athletics teams in the NCAA's top division failed to meet the association's annual benchmark for academic progress, new data show. Of the 6,300 or so teams in Division I, the NCAA's most competitive grouping, nearly 600 scored below the number the association has set as the cutoff point between teams whose athletes are making acceptable progress toward their degrees and teams whose athletes are not. But as it did last year, the NCAA, in its fifth-annual report on the academic performance of athletes, penalized far fewer teams than it could have. It handed out sanctions to 177 teams at 107 colleges--representing just 3 percent of all Division I squads. Of those, 104 will lose scholarships. Eighteen colleges, many of them historically black institutions, received a public warning. For the first time, the NCAA has banned a handful of teams from postseason competition for their poor academic performance. The report looks at a measurement called the Academic Progress Rate, which the NCAA introduced five years ago to gauge how much progress college athletes were making toward their degrees and how well they were performing in the classroom. The measurement gives scores to each Division I team based on eligibility, retention rates, and graduation rates of its players. The benchmark score of 925 out of 1,000, for example, would equal roughly a 60-percent success rate in graduating players within six years. Teams with academic-progress rates below 925 can lose scholarships, and scores below 900 trigger more-severe sanctions, like restrictions on practice time and postseason play.