In February, Utah was among 20 states whose growth-based plans for judging school progress were considered for the pilot program. Hopes were high at the time that the Utah Performance Assessment System for Students (U-PASS) might someday be deemed acceptable as a means of determining school progress under NCLB.
U-PASS considers the growth of each student from year to year instead of comparing the performance of a school's students to performance of the previous year's classes. This "growth-based" method of determining school progress runs counter to NCLB's original requirements.
Growth-based models could become an acceptable way of determining school progress, depending on results of the pilot program. However, Utah was denied participation for other reasons. The Department of Education announced Friday that U-PASS does not comply with three NCLB principles.
U-PASS stipulates that 75 percent of students will be on grade level by the 2013-14 school year - not the 100 percent bar set by NCLB, a demand considered unattainable and unreasonable by the Utah State Office of Education.
But Henry Johnson, assistant U.S. secretary of education, says every student can meet the mark. That's a core principle of NCLB, he said. "The goal is desirable and reachable. It's time to buckle down and get the business going."
Utah also wasn't chosen because it analyzes the success of schools by lumping the scores of various disadvantaged groups into an aggregate score. That can be a way of hiding from problems, Johnson said, and others concur.
Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy, has said NCLB's focus on the problems of individual groups is the law's greatest strength, and holds its best promise for narrowing achievement gaps that exist between white, upper-income students and black, Latino, low-income and disabled students.
Utah State Schools Superintendent Patti Harrington is annoyed that under NCLB, schools can be labeled as failures because of low scores in just one of 40 subgroup areas.
"As few as 11 students in a high school of 2,000 could cause the failure of a school," she said.
The final reason Utah was shut out of the pilot program is the state's method of reporting math and reading scores. NCLB requires individual scores in each area. Utah lumps math and English scores together, also factoring in attendance, graduation rates, difficulty of courses taken and achievement on writing assessments.
Harrington said that though math and reading are of great importance, other things should be considered when determining the quality of a school.
The eight states making the first cut for the pilot program are Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, North Carolina, Oregon and Tennessee. Final acceptance of state plans will be announced after a peer review is completed.
Utah will continue complying with the requirements of NCLB, said Harrington. And, U-PASS will continue as a parallel accountability system - the one given primacy by Utah lawmakers and educators.
cbaker@sltrib.com
