WASHINGTON — A panel of safety experts advising the U.S. Department of Education says the federal law requiring schools with high-crime levels to be labeled "persistently dangerous" needs to be overhauled so more schools are honest about reporting incidents.

The federal No Child Left Behind Act requires states to identify "persistently dangerous" schools and give parents the option of moving their children to safer schools.

But it gives so much leeway to states and school districts about what incidents to count that only those schools diligent about reporting ever come close to making the list. No Hawai'i school has ever been named a "persistently dangerous school."

What's evolved, experts say, is a system in which schools have little incentive to report unsafe incidents. Fewer than 100 of the nation's 90,000-plus public schools have ever been slapped with the label since the law took effect in 2002.

"They get brandished as terrible places and you in fact end up with a counterincentive to report," said Sheppard Kellam, director of the Center for Integration Education and Prevention Research in Schools at the American Institutes for Research. "It's a misguided program."

Kellam was speaking this week as a member of the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Advisory Committee. The panel is expected to provide U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings with recommendations to improve the "persistently dangerous" provision later this year as Congress and the Bush administration debate reauthorization of No Child Left Behind.

Among several changes suggested: