An increasing number of states are resorting to so-called "public shaming" in an effort to get poor-performing public schools to shape up.

• Twenty states now publicly warn schools deemed to be in academic distress -- up from only a handful a decade ago.

• Thirty-five states now issue school report cards -- with Texas, for example, ranking schools on a scale of 1 to 4.

• Educational experts report that the threat or actuality of public humiliation often motivates school administrators to initiate reforms.

• In a variation on the policy, Kentucky has begun identifying good schools that state officials say are not improving as fast as they should.

Observers say the growth in public shaming has been fueled by parents' demand for information and frustration among policymakers frustrated in their efforts to generate change.

In Alabama, for example, 24 schools were placed on "academic alert" in 1996 -- meaning a majority of their students performed below the 23rd percentile nationally on the Stanford Achievement Test. Last year, two of those schools improved sufficiently to be taken off the list, 13 managed to upgrade their rankings to "academic caution" -- and nine, or 38 percent, failed to improve or got worse.

Still, fourth and eighth graders improved, on average, on the Stanford Achievement Test, which they last took in 1990. The only variable that had changed, statewide, since then was the implementation of school ratings.