BOUNTIFUL -- Many Utah schools aren't ranking the academic performance of racial minorities, but compared to other states Utah actually shows some restraint in exploiting this loophole in the No Child Left Behind Act, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.

Under the federal law, which was designed to make schools accountable for the success of every student, Utah reports overall test results by school and by racial categories -- white, black, Hispanic, Asian or American Indian.

However, Utah schools don't have to reveal the performance of racial subgroups if their numbers fall below 10 -- as they do for many schools in Utah, particularly in rural areas. Those minorities' scores are lumped into a school's overall score and sorted by racial category only at the district level. The omission means parents can't judge how well a particular school is educating its racial minorities.

But Utah's cutoff of 10 is exceptionally low among states -- only Maryland has a smaller threshold, exempting racial subgroups that number less than five at the school level. The figure ranges up to 150 in Florida.

By comparison, Utah is making itself more accountable under the No Child law by minimizing the size of racial subgroups, said Patti Harrington, state superintendent of public instruction.

About two years ago, the Utah Legislature threatened to defy the No Child law and forfeit $76 million in federal aid. The Legislature, however, adopted a softer approach, telling state education officials to give precedence to Utah's own assessment standards over federal mandates.

Even so, Harrington said she won't do anything to jeopardize federal funding, leaving Utah in compliance for now.

Educators in Utah defend the practice of not revealing the average test scores of racial subgroups at schools by pointing to privacy concerns. If a school has only six Asian-Americans, for example, revealing that group's performance practically reveals the performance of each individual, they contend.

But by doing so, Utah schools in effect "left behind" 6,424 mostly minority children from the federal law's performance benchmark, according to an Associated Press analysis of figures kept by the National Center for Education Statistics for the 2003-04 school year, the most recent year complete figures were available.

That year, the statistics showed, nearly every public, charter and institutional school in Utah omitted results of at least some minority groups in grades 3-8 and 10, the grades chosen by the AP as most representative of schools' testing procedures under the federal law.

It was a surprise to many parents.

"If they take a test but it doesn't count, that's not fair," business owner Steve Nguyen said while waiting to pick up his daughters at Boulton Elementary School in Bountiful. "We need to count tests. That's why we push them to do homework."

Nguyen said he closely follows his children's progress and makes certain they score well on basic tests. He's puzzled why the school wouldn't rate the performance of Asian-Americans or other racial subgroups at Boulton, even if their numbers are so small it opens privacy questions. For the 2003-04 school year, Boulton reported having just six Asian-Americans. Nguyen can claim two of those.

"It's a very good school," says Nguyen, a Vietnamese immigrant who arrived two decades ago and proudly calls himself a U.S. citizen. "They love this school."

At the only school in Grouse Creek, a ranch town of 63 in Utah's far northwest corner, Sheri Kimber wonders how her school ranks among others, but she may never know.

"I think my kids could get a better education. They could be pushed more, but our school is so small," said Kimber, part of a family of fifth-generation cattle ranchers.

The Grouse Creek school is so small -- with just 18 students spread over kindergarten through 10th grade -- that the No Child law takes zero measure of its performance.

"Anytime we have fewer than 10 students in a given grade, we're exempt because the sample number is too small," said Duane Runyan, head teacher and one part of a husband-and-wife team at Grouse Creek school. "We will never have 10 students in a grade, so we'll never have a problem with the No Child law."

In Utah, as elsewhere, public schools are required to test students in reading and math six times in elementary and middle school and once during high school. It's these results that schools and districts group by racial categories -- although the schools can avoid the requirement.

On the Net:

http://www.usoe.k12.ut.us/

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A4.