Adequate yearly progress comes under the No Child Left Behind Act, signed into law by President Bush in early 2002. The act aims to have all children, regardless of ethnicity, income, disability or English language skill level, score as proficient on state tests — in Utah, the core curriculum test, or CRT — by 2014.

Movement toward the goal is measured through adequate yearly progress. Utah's first AYP reports were released Monday. About two-thirds of schools made the mark.

Information about specific schools' performance is available at www.usoe.k12.ut.us and on individual school district Web sites. A list of which schools made AYP and which did not is at deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,575037091,00.html.

Basically, AYP requires schools to do two things: test 95 percent of students, and either meet state benchmarks in language arts and math, or show enough improvement toward that academic goal.

That rule applies to the whole school, plus nine groups of students: economically disadvantaged, Caucasian, African American, American Indian, Hispanic, Asian, Pacific Islander, students with disabilities and students with limited English proficiency. If one group misses a mark, the whole school fails to make AYP.

The all-or-nothing system doesn't sit well with some Utah parents and school officials. Some also question whether it's fair to hold special education students to the same standard as a gifted child.

There's not much the State Office of Education can do about those standards.

But it did try to fairly apply No Child Left Behind rules in Utah, where schools might enroll 12 students, as is the case at Wendover's Callao School, or 2,000 in some Wasatch Front high schools.

Still, size still matters in No Child Left Behind. And if the schools are small, "it makes it more likely they'll meet the (AYP) criteria," state testing coordinator Louise Moulding said.

Schools must have at least 40 students to be counted under the participation rule and at least 10 students to be counted for academic achievement. Schools with too few students in any one group of students, such as African-Americans, automatically make AYP in that area.

And those automatic "passes" are easier to come by in rural schools because many lack the diversity of a Wasatch Front school. The same goes for other small schools.

Valley High School, an alternative school in Jordan District, showed 86 percent of 14 students were proficient in math. Last year, the number was 71 percent. The school made AYP because of the test score gain.

Good things might be going on in those schools, Jordan District testing director Frank Shaw said. But AYP reports don't tell him much. That's because a single child's test score carries so much weight, it's hard to see what's really happening.