Utah educators await NCLB grades

Parents and students will find out this week if their districts and schools meet the requirements of the federal mandate No Child Left Behind.

The Utah State Office of Education is scheduled to release NCLB's Adequate Yearly Progress reports publicly on Wednesday. Some districts and schools will be labeled failing, while others will pass.

"NCLB is such a curious mixture of rules. One never really knows until you see the results," said Darryl Thomas, Granite School District director of research, assessment and evaluation.

Utah's testing officials also plan to announce Wednesday how students did on the conglomerate of state-required tests: the Utah Performance Assessment System for Students. To reach an acceptable level for U-PASS, a school must meet state standards in whole school participation, proficiency and progress.

NCLB data is based on the Criterion-Referenced Test, which students take each spring. AYP reports label each school with a passing grade only if the school succeeds in 40 categories, including attendance.

NCLB aims for schools to ensure all students are succeeding — regardless of ethnicity, English skills, income or disability — and are proficient in language arts and math by 2014.

Title 1 schools that don't pass AYP are put on a "school improvement list" and subject to sanctions. A school is designated Title 1 based on the number of students qualifying for free and reduced lunch.

With NCLB, the required scores for proficiency are raised every two years. This year is a bar-raising year. Does that mean more schools will fail for 2009?

"We'll see how that plays out," said Judy Park, State Office of Education associate superintendent of data, assessment and accountability.

Park points out the state is "very focused on improving student achievement." Extra efforts, such as boosting tutoring, may balance out the challenge posed by raising the bar, she said.

Another factor that could affect the data is Utah's math scores were figured differently this year. "It will be interesting to see," Park said.

The state revised its math standards — the curriculum is more rigorous, and therefore so are the tests. Because of this, federal officials approved a lower scoring criteria in math for Utah's AYP reports. The targets vary by state.