Eighty-five percent of schools met requirements in 2006-07 under the Utah Performance Assessment System for Students (U-PASS). That is one percentage point higher than the year before.

Although requirements for demonstrating Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) under the federal No Child Left Behind education reform law got tougher and a full 27 percent of Utah schools failed to make AYP, standards were not raised under U-PASS.

"The thing about U-PASS that's nice over AYP is U-PASS currently is very static, so you can compare last year to this year," said Judy Park, Utah Office of Education associate superintendent for data, assessment and accountability.

Some school districts saw large gains in performance including Jordan, the state's largest district, which went from 72 percent of its schools meeting U-PASS to about 80 percent. These percentages reflect only elementary and middle schools. The state will release U-PASS data for high schools in October.

Although the federal and state school accountability systems use similar ingredients, such as test participation and attendance, AYP has many narrow targets that must be met for a school to succeed, including high enough test scores by every unique population of the school.

If a school fails to meet even a single target, it does not make AYP. The Utah system, in contrast, credits schools for making progress and doesn't fail schools for poor performance by any single subset of the student population. Critics say U-PASS doesn't hold schools accountable, particularly when it comes to minority achievement.

Regardless, principals say both U-PASS and AYP point to areas in their schools that need more attention, although schools already were identifying at least some of their challenges before accountability systems developed.

"It's a nice way of reporting to everyone the big picture of how schools are performing," said South Jordan Middle School Principal Diana Kline.

At South Jordan, which met U-PASS last school year, tutoring is used to push struggling students ahead. Kids who are failing classes are asked to go to "lunch school" to get one-on-one help.

After not making U-PASS in 2005-2006, Oquirrh Hills Middle School in Riverton succeeded last school year.

"It's a great feeling," Principal G. Norma Villar said. "You're thinking, 'What we're doing is working.' "

The school has stressed small-group instruction and tutoring to help struggling students. Seventh-graders who start at the school with low math test scores get special help for 35 minutes a day. Free after-school tutoring in a variety of subjects is available.

For a school such as Parkview Elementary in Salt Lake City, which did not make U-PASS, "We just keep on," in the words of Principal Janine Smith.

With more than 80 percent of students speaking a language other than English at home, the school now boasts an entire staff of teachers trained in strategies to teach students for whom English is a second language. Full-day kindergarten and tutoring in the languages of students who are refugees also will help.

Districts openly discussed their U-PASS results at the end of last week, but a few said they had not had adequate time to scrutinize the data.

Davis School District officials said they only recently received the latest version of the information and were surprised it had been made public. Chris Wahlquist, Davis research and assessment director, had understood from the state that U-PASS information would be released in October.

"We have had insufficient time to analyze the data and determine if the formulas have been applied accurately," she said.

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* JULIA LYON can be contacted at jlyon@sltrib.com or 801-257-8748.