North Carolina's intense focus on boosting passing rates on math and reading tests has meant less emphasis on subjects such as science and foreign languages and has left high-achieving students with too little attention, a new report asserts.

The study, issued Tuesday by the influential N.C. Public School Forum, urges state education leaders to make the state's schools more internationally competitive by rethinking a decade-old accountability system, do more to strengthen the skills of teachers and broaden students' knowledge about the world.

"It's not an exaggeration that virtually all policy initiatives in the last 10 years have been aimed at getting low-performing students up to passing in reading and math," said John Dornan, president of the school forum, one of the state's largest education lobbies. "Things that aren't tested get squeezed out."

The yearlong study was completed by groups of educators, legislators and advocates under an annual focus by the forum on key education issues.

The latest study's principal focus is how North Carolina's schools compare with those of other industrialized nations.

The recommendations fall into three broad categories: strengthening math and science instruction, giving schools a more global focus and improving professional development for teachers.

The report urges the state to pay more attention to the needs of higher achieving students by adjusting an annual accountability system that largely stresses getting students to pass yearly multiple-choice exams.

"A designation for high performance should be added to the accountability program and labels such as 'proficient' should be reserved only for the top performers," states one recommendation.

In addition, the report criticizes the state's heavy use of multiple-choice exams.

To better serve the state's strongest students, the report recommends establishing regional schools modeled after the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics in Durham. To address a chronic shortage of math and science teachers, the report urges the state to significantly expand efforts to pay teachers in both subjects higher salaries than teachers of other subjects.

Tom Johnson, president of Wake County Partners for the Advancement of Gifted Education, said he supports the call for higher standards and more focus on the achievement of all students.

"It would be wonderful if more were done to help encourage and promote students' academic growth, regardless of where they are, overachieving or not," said Johnson, whose two children attend Fuller Elementary School in Raleigh. "Students of whatever ability ought to be challenged."

Sam Houston, a member of the forum committee that studied the math and science issue, said the state's assessment system doesn't encourage students to think critically and solve problems.

"Do we want kids to do science or do we just want them to remember the periodic table?" asked Houston, president of the N.C. Mathematics, Science and Technology Education Center, a nonprofit group that focuses on advancing science instruction in public schools. "Assessment elsewhere in the world doesn't look like North Carolina's."