Contrary to the insistence of state education chiefs, Utah school districts cannot average test scores to determine whether a school has met No Child Left Behind standards, U.S. Department of Education representatives told the Deseret Morning News Friday.

Chad Colby, the department's deputy assistant secretary for media affairs, said that state officials should be following the state's accountability workbook, a blueprint Utah set with the federal government for how it will decide whether schools are leaving children behind.

Averaging test scores over three years to see if a school meets the standard is not in it.

Patrick Rooney, policy adviser in the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, said his office will contact the Utah State Office of Education over the matter.

"This is the first we heard of this. It's something we in the Department of Education are going to have to put our heads around and grapple with and reach out to the (Utah) office of education," he said.

But the matter is not clear-cut for some Utah school leaders.

Utah once had the green light to use three-year averaging. Other states apparently do it, too, and the State Office of Education has indicated it wants to put it back in the book.

That said, state associate superintendent Brenda Hales says neither the state nor districts have done anything wrong.

"Not in my opinion," she said.

She also says her office has contacted the federal government on this issue.

"I would say it just goes to the complexity of No Child Left Behind and all the issues that go along with granting states flexibility," Hales said.

"What we would rather do is err on the side of one, making sure we are not misidentifying schools because it has severe financial implications for the students," Hales said. "There's the other half of it: We don't want to not identify a school that's in need of improvement. ... Our goal is to be the steward for the state and do what's in (students') best interest. So that's where we're coming from."

No Child Left Behind, the federal education law, expects all students to be able to read and do math well by 2014. States publicly report which schools make "adequate yearly progress," or AYP, toward the goal. They also report which ones don't.

Last spring, 256 Utah schools failed to make AYP, the state reported.

Since, however, those ranks have shrunk by at least 25 schools in Granite District alone. A full report is expected next month.

Three-year averaging was conditionally allowed in Utah's 2003 workbook and was confirmed as appropriate in the U.S. department's December 2005 letter to the State Office of Education. However, that provision was not included in the 2005 workbook the federal government approved the month before. The workbook can change every year.