SHISHMAREF, Alaska -- Craig Probst, school principal in the village of Wales, population 135, is an academic jack-of-all-trades.

The one school in the Inupiat Eskimo hunting and fishing community has 35 students of all ages and just four teachers. So Probst teaches reading, writing, math and social studies, full time.

"We are generalists," said Probst, who has worked in schools throughout rural Alaska for 17 years. "We have to cover all the subject areas."

But when it comes to statistics, their flexibility isn't paying off. The federal No Child Left Behind Act docked points from the Wales/Kingikmiut School last year because most classes are taught by teachers who do not have a bachelor's degree, a state license and proven competency in that subject.

The school, and dozens of others across rural Alaska, falls far below the national average in the number of classes taught by teachers considered "highly qualified" under the law, which sets strict performance guidelines for students and teachers.

But that and other provisions affecting rural schools could change if No Child Left Behind is renewed as scheduled this year, according to the Education Department.

With tiny schools scattered across unimaginably vast swaths of roadless country, Alaska, perhaps better than any state, highlights the flaws of President Bush's heavily contested education law as applied to rural areas. Schools face sanctions, such as a state or private management takeover, if they don't make progress over a certain time period.

Like most of the country, teachers and administrators throughout rural Alaska are demanding changes before Congress votes on reauthorizing the law.

"One size doesn't fit all," said Roger Sampson, president of the Education Commission of the States, a nonpartisan policy analysis nonprofit based in Denver. "Every state will tell you how it doesn't work for them because they're unique, and they are. But nobody is looking at the challenges Alaska has because of its sheer remoteness and size."

Sampson, who served as Alaska's education commissioner for the past four years, said the problems faced by rural schools include:

-- The methods of calculating test scores, graduation and attendance rates in small schools, where even a handful of absent students can mean the school fails to show adequate yearly progress as defined by the law.

-- Hiring teachers and teacher aides who are highly qualified in the subjects they teach. Alaska has about 500 schools, and 100 have three or fewer teachers who are responsible for an array of classes.

-- Offering students the option to transfer elsewhere if a school is identified as "in need of improvement."

Students in the Bering Strait village of Shishmaref live 450 miles from the only major road system in the state. The eastern coast of Russia is closer than the regional hub community of Nome, a 125-mile plane ride to the south. The closest villages are about 50 miles away and can only be reached by plane or snowmobile.

"Unless they're going to move and leave their families and communities behind, there's no where for them to go," said Angie Alston, who teaches history to 7-12 graders in the Inupiat Eskimo community of 615 people. "The notification that your school is failing is pointless in that respect, as far as transferring goes."

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, have joined other members of Congress in calling for changes to the law.

Murkowski, a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, was one of several lawmakers to introduce bills this year proposing changes to the act. She said her vote to renew No Child Left Behind will depend on whether it accommodates the challenges faced by rural schools.

Among other things, the bill would require rural teachers to prove expertise in one academic subject rather than the four or five they may be responsible for teaching. It would also allow underperforming districts to offer tutoring or distance-learning classes instead of moving students to other schools and would change the testing requirements for indigenous language immersion programs, such as Native Hawaiian or Yup'ik Eskimo.

Young introduced a bill containing some similar changes in the House.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, who visited schools in Bethel, Nome, Shishmaref and Anchorage this week, said Alaska has done well under the law, pointing to federal data that shows 326 of the state's schools, or 65 percent, made adequate yearly progress in the 2006 school year, compared to 62 percent the year before.

But she also acknowledged the special circumstances found in the state and said the administration "wants to make sure (the law) is workable in all sorts of settings."

In Wales, 37 percent of the core academic classes are taught by highly qualified teachers according to No Child Left Behind. The national average is nearly 91 percent.

Probst is not highly qualified in math, but teaches it anyway because there's no one else to do it.

"I might not qualified to teach pre-calculus, but I can teach the lower grades fractions and multiplication and I do," said Probst, who is highly qualified in language arts. "We believe the data and testing are extremely important, but it all boils down to the transfer of knowledge between student and teacher, and whether that connection is taking place."

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page B2.