Spellings announced a pilot program that will allow 10 states to change how they sanction schools that accept federal funding to serve low-income areas but don't meet federal testing goals. It will allow states to differentiate between schools that miss the mark by a little versus schools that miss it by a lot. Now, schools that accept federal money for serving low-income areas all face the same consequences regardless of their reasons for failing to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) toward the goals of No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

To make AYP, schools must meet goals each year - in each of 40 categories - toward the ultimate goal of NCLB - that all students test on grade-level in math and reading by 2014. NCLB critics have long complained it's unfair to sanction an entire school for missing just one or two marks out of the 40.

"Today, No Child Left Behind functions much like a pass/fail system," Spellings said. "Now we can make distinctions."

Utah State Schools Superintendent Patti Harrington, however, said she'll recommend the Utah State Board of Education not apply for the program. She said it's not worth the time and effort of applying when Utah is unlikely to be accepted.

Spellings said the U.S. Department of Education will give preference to states where at least 20 percent of schools that accept federal money for serving low-income areas are failing to meet goals. In Utah, only 5 percent of such schools are now failing to meet federal goals, Harrington said.

Utah simply has fewer schools serving low-income areas, and the state's schools are doing a good job of meeting goals, she said.

"To only give permission to 10 states . . . just doesn't make sense to me," Harrington said. "I just really resent that."

Spellings also said her department will give preference to states "that have been pioneers for reform." Utah has grudgingly enforced NCLB since it became law six years ago.

"Had [Utah] taken a different approach to accountability . . . we might have been in a better position to take advantage of this now than we are," said Andrea Rorrer, director of the Utah Education Policy Center at the University of Utah.

Rorrer called the pilot program "an enormous step toward actually having accountability that works."

"It has the components that Utah has been seeking for the past six years."

Under the pilot, states would have more flexibility in how to impose sanctions. For example, Spellings said, now schools that serve low-income areas but fail to make AYP for a certain number of years must offer to pay for tutoring for all the school's students. Under the pilot program, a state could decide to offer tutoring only to students in the groups that missed the mark.

Utah is skipping the program because its chances of acceptance are slim, but that didn't stop the state from applying for a different program recently. It applied to use the state's accountability system, U-PASS, to help determine whether Utah schools meet federal goals. U-PASS takes student improvement over time into account whereas the federal model does not.

The state applied to use U-PASS despite the fact the U.S. Department of Education turned down a similar request in 2006 mainly because U-PASS doesn't require all students to test on grade level by 2014, said Patrick Rooney, a senior policy adviser at the U.S. Education Department.

Harrington said that's an unrealistic goal.

She doubts the federal government will change its mind about allowing Utah to use U-PASS to determine federal accountability this time. Still, the state applied to use U-PASS again as a way to send a message, said Judy Park, associate state schools superintendent.