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Ten months ago, Star reporters began filing a series of public-records requests, hoping to assess the performance of Tucson-area students.

The requests yielded more than 3 million anonymous student grades from the 2001-02 through 2006-07 school years. Reporters then began looking for patterns in the data, particularly in how many students performed well or poorly each year.

Reporters found that many more students were being promoted yearly than were passing classes, particularly courses in English, math, science and social studies.

But reaching that conclusion wasn't easy. Data came in varied and sometimes confusing formats. Some districts don't keep complete electronic records. And in many cases, despite repeated requests, districts provided no guidance on what constituted a core class, leaving the newspaper to decide what those classes were.

Reporters did not look at most alternative-education programs because of differences in grading and curricula compared with other schools. It did not examine elementary schools because of the lack of comparable grade data from district to district.

Eight of the nine major districts in the Tucson area complied with the Star's records requests. The exception was Amphitheater Public Schools, which last year had 7,638 middle and high school students.

Amphi spokesman Todd Jaeger said the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act prohibited Amphi from providing data to the Star, although the law allows officials to release information that is not "personally identifiable." Data the district ultimately provided could not be used to accurately gauge student progress.

Although the Star's analysis revealed gaps in student performance, it also showed the disparity in how student data is stored or retrieved. Examples include:

● The Sunnyside Unified School District keeps grades before 2005 on paper and not electronically, officials said.

● The Marana Unified School District had no way to provide summer school data, nor could officials there tell reporters how many students took such courses.

● Many districts have different ways for storing data, using varied computer systems or databases that can make it difficult to implement standards for ensuring the data are kept safe and that records are backed up.

The lack of a comprehensive database can be problematic, said former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise, now president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a non-profit group in Washington, D.C. That comprehensive system, he said, "can catch early-warning indicators" such as students failing in key grades and classes.

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