Maine’s plan to comply with the new federal education reform law, the No Child Left Behind Act, has been approved by the U.S. Department of Education.

The new plan, which emphasizes assessment and accountability, requires pupils in grades three through eight to be tested annually.

Under the newly approved guidelines, Maine will be allowed to use the Learning Results system to measure student achievement, Education Commissioner Susan Gendron said Tuesday. Schools are developing ways to measure the new standards, which take effect for the high school graduating Class of 2007.

“The department was very willing to work with Maine’s philosophy with the Learning Results,” Gendron said during a conference call with Maine Deputy Commissioner Patrick Phillips and U.S. Undersecretary of Education Eugene Hickok.

“I can’t compliment Commissioner Gendron enough,” said Hickok. “She really did a marvelous job of trying to blend the best of what Maine does with the challenges of No Child Left Behind.”

No Child Left Behind is a national education reform program mandating that pupils in grades three through eight be tested annually in math and reading by 2005-06 and in science by 2007-08. Students are supposed to be tested once in grades 10-12.

If schools don’t make “adequate yearly progress,” they will be identified as failing and be subject to a series of escalating consequences, including having to offer the choice of other schools and tutoring, as well as dismissing teachers, paraprofessionals and administrators.

So far, about 40 schools in Maine have been classified as “priority schools” needing improvement.

Maine’s accountability plan and those of 16 other states were given a thumbs-up Tuesday. Now all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia have plans in place.

Under the new plan, the state will continue to use the Maine Educational Assessment – the standardized test given in the fourth, eighth and 11th grades – and will be able to choose different ways to measure student achievement during the other years.

“We’ll be wrestling in the coming few weeks on selecting what we think is the best approach, whether it’s the MEA, a local assessment or a blending of the two,” said Phillips. “The federal law is mostly interested in the fact that we have a valid, reliable and comparable method for assessing student learning and leaves it up to the state to select [ways] to meet those criteria … .”

The approval comes on the heels of the federal government’s rejection of Maine lawmakers’ request to either exempt the state from No Child Left Behind or fully fund the cost of complying with it.

Hickok said Tuesday that the federal government has allotted around $90 million to help Maine put the law into place.

“But we would say, while money does matter, that it’s how you spend it that needs to be the focus. One of the real virtues of a strong accountability system is that when it’s fully in place you will know how to make wiser decisions when you use taxpayer dollars,” he said.

U.S. Rep. Michael Michaud said in a news release Tuesday that he has helped introduce legislation to waive compliance with No Child Left Behind until Congress appropriates all the funds pledged when the law was enacted.

Maine would receive an additional $22.6 million for the current fiscal year above the amount appropriated by Congress, Michaud said.

In its proposal, the state requested a “safe harbor provision” – where a school is said to have made adequate yearly progress as long as the percent of students below proficient has been reduced by 10 percent from the previous year. The request was honored, but the state didn’t get everything it wanted.

“There are certain provisions we wouldn’t have chosen, such as testing students each year,” said Phillips, noting that the state had hoped to test students once every several years.

“That’s an area where the law has made it difficult for us, but the staff in Washington has been helpful in figuring out a way to work within it,” he said.

Starting in September the focus will be on how to present information to residents about “continuous improvement for every school and every child,” said Gendron. A new data management system will help provide a “comprehensive report card on every school in the state,” she said.

“The No Child Left Behind Act is one of the most important reforms to public education in decades,” Sen. Susan Collins said in a prepared statement. “But it is imperative these reforms build upon the successes we have already achieved in Maine.” Collins said she recently voted to increase funding for No Child Left Behind by $8.9 billion.

Sen. Olympia Snowe also urged the federal government not to let the federal education law become another unfunded mandate. In a news release she said she has asked for more money to help states meet test requirements, track academic achievement and provide technical assistance for schools identified as needing improvement.