The state school board wants to meet federal No Child Left Behind rules in its own way and have the law changed so it's more realistic.

The State Board of Education on Friday voted to ask the U.S. Department of Education to let it use the Utah Performance Assessment System for Students (U-PASS) to judge whether or not schools are up to snuff. It joins 13 other states seeking the same right, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Patti Harrington said.

The board also took a stand on No Child Left Behind — mainly, that the federal standard be changed to give states more flexibility, with more realistic goals for students with disabilities.

The stand comes as Utah Rep. Margaret Dayton, R-Orem, works on a "No Child Left Behind Option" bill, according to the Utah Legislature's Web site.

Dayton did not return calls for comment Friday. The State Office of Education reports she plans to unveil her plans next week. Last year, Dayton sponsored, then pulled, a bill to opt Utah out of the controversial federal law, putting $100 million in federal funding at risk.

The state school board prefers to work with the federal government rather than risk losing even some of the money.

"We're the state least able to do without federal funds," board vice chairwoman Janet Cannon said. "I can see NCLB is doing some good things for kids."

No Child Left Behind upholds an ambitious goal: have all students, regardless of race, income or disability, reading and doing math well by 2014. States get to come up with their own plans to meet the goal. They must issue annual reports on "Adequate Yearly Progress" (AYP) toward the goal as a monitoring tool.

But the state school board wants flexibility to help schools improve. It wants to let students with significant disabilities take tests on their own level, as required in a separate federal law. It wants to give schools credit for improving, even if students aren't scoring as high as the state would like.

Basically, it thinks U-PASS and its many tests, including a high school graduation test, writing exams and core curriculum tests (CRTs) used by NCLB now, does all NCLB wants Utah to do — maybe more. So U-PASS should become Utah's NCLB plan, board members reason.

"The goal is that it will more correctly identify schools, that it will be a more appropriate way to look at schools (and academic growth) than the way AYP is doing it," state testing director Judy Park said.

U-PASS tests this summer were reshaped to show students' academic growth.

A state task force now is polishing plans to identify schools that aren't up to snuff. It wants to look at schools' language arts, math and science test scores as well as attendance and graduation rates. Then it would monitor to see whether schools got better in those areas each year — how much better will be set within the month.

"We really celebrate improvement and growth much more than what the federal plan does," Park said. "Education is about how you're growing and learning and improving . . . This is looking at multiple measures, a more comprehensive look than just looking at one or two things."

Harrington indicated the request would be a long shot. One-third of what Utah has wanted to change on its AYP plan has been given the green light.

But it's worth a try: The U.S. Department of Education is letting Nebraska use its own accountability plan for NCLB.

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