Advice to Congress: Dump part or all of 'No Child Left Behind'

State school chiefs are calling for a summit with Spellings or President Bush to discuss their frustrations with the law, states Harrington's letter contained in the State Board of Education's meeting packet. Congress also is doing a one-year road trip to receive feedback on the law.

At the request of Utah's congressional delegation, who Harrington said are concerned Utah's growth model wasn't approved and about "the shrinking federal dollar" to support NCLB, Harrington said she drafted the May 9 position paper. She gave it to state legislative leaders; the governor; Rep. Margaret Dayton, R-Orem, who carried anti-NCLB legislation; and state superintendents nationwide, her letter states. Timothy expects the state will seek input from district superintendents.

Harrington suggests several actions, including turning the law back to the 1990s before federal "interference" in accountability, requiring states only have Legislature-approved accountability plans or just report student test scores by group and graduation rates, and turning the U.S. Department of Education into a research group.

She details two other plans — one renaming the law "Every Child a Graduate" and the other, fixing the existing law — whose elements contain striking resemblance to U-PASS, including setting state standards, testing to measure academic growth and allowing states to lump test scores of groups together for accountability purposes, rather than making judgments on each group's test scores.

Other proposals include testing students with disabilities on their intellectual level; funding to help struggling students in any school, not just those serving low-income children; and considering teachers highly qualified if they have degrees related to what they're teaching, rather than a degree in each subject taught. They also include some state initiatives, including full-day kindergarten, plus differentiated pay for teachers with specialized training and publicly funded preschool.

"The (current) law is limited in flexibility. It also tends to take away control from the states," Timothy said. Utah's draft would allow educational leaders to "look at what the challenges are in our own states, and allow us to then make the decisions we need to get us to that ultimate goal."

Timothy has no doubt states would comply with the law on their own in this new day of accountability.

But states for 40 years were using Title I funds with relatively little accountability. A national study found the funds were not being used effectively and children were not more successful in school, said Shauna Carl, Salt Lake City School District executive director for learning services.

The 2001 No Child Left Behind law aimed to address that through highly qualified teacher rules, public reports on each school's progress toward its goals, and for Title I schools, sanctions leading up to state takeovers.