State education officials outlined the Utah Performance Assessment System for Students (U-PASS) at a legislative committee meeting Wednesday - a day after lawmakers passed a bill declaring that the system supersedes accountability standards mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind law.

State testing director Judy Park acknowledged U-PASS won't be operational until fall, when scores are known from spring state tests and when formulas have been crunched to measure school quality.

Those scores will enable educators to set thresholds that determine school quality, Park said. Each school will have a report card detailing whether the school's performance is "acceptable" or "not acceptable," and whether students' progress is low, medium or high.

This spring's test scores also will provide a second year of test-score data that, when compared to 2004 baseline scores, show whether a school made enough progress in improving student achievement.

"We still have a lot of work to do once we get our 2005 assessments," Park said.

Educators also have to develop formulas for measuring whether subgroups of students - ethnic groups, English learners, disadvantaged students and students with disabilities - are performing up to par, and how their performance affects school performance.

"We'll be looking at how subgroups are going to need to improve" in order for their results to be rolled into a school's total score, Park said.

Minority groups, community activists and the federal government are watching closely to see just how those groups are rolled in to the total score.

U-PASS' original incarnation proposed reporting subgroups' scores, it didn't hold schools accountable for improving those scores. The state school board insisted on subgroup accountability, as do minority groups and Washington.

That means they want schools to be required to show improvement for all student groups.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings on Wednesday cautioned against weakening Utah's accountability standards.

"Returning to the pre-NCLB days of fuzzy accountability and hiding children in averages will do nothing to help the students who are currently enrolled in Utah's schools,” she said in a statement.

rlynn@sltrib.com