Utah takes action.

When Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. recently signed a bill that orders state officials to ignore the federal education law provisions that conflict with Utah's education goals or that would use state money, the federal government took it as a step back to mediocrity.

"Turning back the clock and returning to the pre-NCLB days of fuzzy accountability and hiding children in averages will do nothing to help the students who are currently enrolled in Utah's schools," U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has stated.

The action is the greatest challenge so far in the third year of President Bush's law, No Child Left Behind. Several lawmakers said the federal law unconstitutionally expands into state territory.

The problem for Utah now is funding. Spellings warned that depending on how the state complies, the U.S. Department of Education might withhold $76 million of $107 million that Utah receives in federal education money, according to Mark Peterson, spokesman for Utah Department of Education.

"We will continue to comply with what we need to comply with to keep the funds coming in," Peterson says. "The bill allows us to do whatever is minimally required to meet the provisions behind NCLB."

Utah will use the state school accountability system, or Utah Performance Assessment System for Students. The feds have said U-PASS falls short of key NCLB requirements, particularly requiring that all students be proficient in reading and math by 2014.

Peterson adds that Utah has given annual testing for years, before NCLB existed. The state uses criterion-referenced tests every year in math and language arts from grades 1 through 12, and science every year beginning in fourth grade.

When Democrat Rep. Duane Bourdeaux, the state's sole black representative, pushed for an amendment to guarantee student achievement data will continue to be reported separately for each racial and other subgroup, the legislature defeated it.

Peterson says schools know the students who are not testing well. "No one in Utah is looking to leave any child behind but we're also not looking to be held to such stringent standards that are impossible to make," Peterson says.

He adds that the state's third- through eighth-graders are 70 percent proficient in math and language arts, but high schools are struggling and many "special education kids are not making it."