Counting subgroups.

There are more than twice as many Asian/Pacific Islander students as there are whites in the Alief Independent School District in Houston. And yet when it comes to Texas' No Child Left Behind accountability system, whites are included in their own racial subgroup, but Asians aren't.

When Texas submitted its No Child plan to the U.S. Department of Education, it excluded Asians and Native Americans as subgroups because it felt the populations were too small to be reliable--3 percent are Asian/Pacific Islander and .3 percent are Native American.

When states propose their racial subgroups, the education department reviews them on case-by-case basis, says Meredith Miller, the department's senior policy adviser. The department does not have a uniform percentage threshold for racial subgroups, she says.

For example, Arkansas does not include less its than 1 percent of Native American students as a subgroup. But California, where .8 percent of students are Native American, does.

Does allowing these differences unfairly penalize states that include small ethnic populations, or does it slap in the face of the point of the law--to ensure no child is left behind? NCLB recognizes every state is different, Miller says. "We really didn't look at this as a fairness issue," she says. "We look at the [state's] rationale to see whether it makes sense."

The inclusion of an Asian or Native American subgroup would perhaps affect only the 10 largest Texas districts, says DeEtta Culbertson, spokeswoman for Texas Education Agency. Even though Asian or Native American students may not have subgroups, their test results help determine whether a school or district meets its overall adequate yearly progress targets, Miller says. "I don't think that those students and their needs will disappear just because they are only part of the 'all category,'" she says.