Proposed changes to education accountability in Utah have ruffled feathers among residents and leaders of the state's ethnic minority groups.

In a community meeting Wednesday night, Rep. Duane Bourdeaux, D-Salt Lake, spoke to about 30 residents who are concerned new legislation will jeopardize federal education funding and leave minority students behind.

A legislative measure that will come before a special session April 20 will effectively give priority to the state's U-PASS testing program over the federal No Child Left Behind system. Bourdeaux said that change could allow minority children to slip through the cracks because the state program has no accountability provisions for ethnic subgroups.

"Is No Child Left Behind a perfect piece of legislation? Absolutely not," he said. "But there has never been a piece of legislation with this kind of accountability. That's what we can grab on to."

The federal NCLB program aims to close the achievement gap by having all students, regardless of race, income or disability, proficient in reading and math by 2014.

Kathleen Christy, assistant to the superintendent of the Salt Lake City School District, also expressed concern over a recent move by state education leaders to require schools to have at least 40 students in each ethnic or low-income subgroup before they're accountable for achievement under NCLB.

The current requirement is 10 students per group. The higher standard would mean fewer schools would have to ensure their minority groups pass achievement tests. Only one school in the state, for example, would be held accountable for achievement of black third- through eight-graders instead of the 29 schools now accountable.

"By raising it up that high, we're leaving students behind," Christy said.

Patrick Garcia, also an assistant to the Salt Lake superintendent, said allowing U-PASS to supercede NCLB sends a message that expectations are somehow lower for ethnic students. The best part of the NCLB program he said, is that it requires schools to look at individual subgroups and expects 100 percent proficiency from all of them.

"One hundred percent proficient is an unrealistic goal," he said. "But if we don't keep that as a goal, then which students are we saying up front don't have to be proficient? It's not OK."

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