Don't forget accountability

Utah lawmakers took a strong stand for local control of schools and states' rights when they passed legislation Tuesday giving state standards priority over the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

It remains to be seen if the stand will cost the state millions in federal education dollars. If the federal government is committed to the idea that no child should be left behind in the nation's public schools, there is little sense in withdrawing federal funding from schools that need it most.

As that issue is debated, Utah school leaders must keep the pressure on struggling schools that responded positively to the requirements under the Bush administration program. NCLB has many flaws, but surely state leaders recognize that under the intense scrutiny of NCLB's standards, a number of Utah schools made remarkable progress. School leaders must develop an accountability program that produces similar outcomes. Otherwise, all the grand speeches about sovereignty, federalism and local control are empty rhetoric.

In passing this legislation, state lawmakers have made a powerful statement that Utah leaders know what is best for students. They can point to Utah's high graduation rate, stellar test scores and traditionally strong academic achievement. These benchmarks are impressive when examined in the aggregate. But Utah's strong students tend to pull up the numbers of students whose test scores and educational outcomes are abysmal. Utah has to do more to close those achievement gaps.

While many states have been critical of NCLB, the action of the Utah Legislature and a lawsuit filed Wednesday by school districts in Texas, Michigan and Vermont and the nation's largest teachers union are clear indications of the states' growing frustration over NCLB. The lawsuit seeks to free schools from complying with any portion of NCLB not paid for by the federal government.

Top-down education initiatives are problematic because education systems vary greatly from state to state, if not among school districts within a state. Yet, NCLB prescribes the same fix and benchmarks for a school in inner-city Detroit as for a school in Bountiful, Utah's east bench. This is bureaucratic lunacy.

It's highly regrettable that the federal government did not make a greater effort to work with states that believe parts of NCLB are unworkable and tantamount to unfunded government mandates. The Bush administration has made some accommodations but apparently wasn't interested in further negotiations once it determined that Utah lawmakers were not going to blink, even under the threat of losing federal education funds.

Most of this debate centered on the state's preference to use its Utah Performance Assessment System for Students instead of the federally prescribed yardsticks. That's an understandable desire. But whatever the state ends up using must break down test data so underachieving student populations are readily identified and they receive the help they need to bring up their academic achievement and boost graduation rates.