New federal rules are giving schools more flexibility to test — and pass — special-education students under the No Child Left Behind Act.

The Bush administration announced that schools will be allowed to administer easier and more suitable tests to certain students with disabilities who have struggled on traditional exams.

In addition, states may count the proficient and advanced scores on those assessments when calculating whether a school made "adequate yearly progress" under the law, as long as the number of such scores do not exceed 2 percent of all students assessed.

About 11 percent of the nearly 25,000 schools that failed to make adequate progress in the 2004-'05 school year did so because special-education students did not score high enough.

The administration said it will make $21.1 million in technical assistance grants available to help states create new tests.

Signed into law in 2002, No Child Left Behind expects all children, regardless of ability, to be grade-level proficient in math and reading by 2014 and requires states to test them regularly.

For more information, go to www.ed.gov/nclb, the No Child Left Behind section of the U.S. Department of Education site.

— Gannett News Service

'HELICOPTER' MOMS

PARENTAL HOVERING IS EVERYWHERE, STUDY FINDS

Most of what we know about the habits of "helicopter parents" comes from anecdotes about extreme parenting that have made their way into the popular lexicon.

Now, though, what may be the first scholarly research on parents who hover too closely over offspring of any age finds that helicopter parenting appears to cross racial and ethnic lines, as well as socioeconomic status.

The research suggests that most helicoptering is by mothers who are hyperinvolved with their sons' lives; fathers are more likely to use strong-arm tactics to get results.

"We estimate that 60 percent to 70 percent of parents are involved in some kind of helicoptering behavior," says Patricia Somers, an associate professor of education at the University of Texas-Austin, whose analysis is based on more than 50 interviews with officials from 10 four-year public universities across the United States.

— USA Today