Clark County School District officials are preparing to mail out about 40,000 letters to parents of children attending low-income schools, alerting them of their option of transferring their children to a school that has consistently met federal standards of the No Child Left Behind Act.

Letters will be sent on Aug. 10 to parents at 48 elementary and middle schools. The majority of those schools have failed to meet federal benchmarks for at least two consecutive years. Although some schools did meet federal standards for the 2005-06 school year, they were still deemed as failing because they did not meet the requirements two years running.

Under a provision in the federal law, district officials must provide transportation from a Title I school that failed to meet federal standards to a non-failing school. Although this is the third consecutive year the district is offering this service, a very small percentage of parents participate.

District officials sent out 27,000 letters to parents at 33 Title I schools before the 2005-06 school year. Fewer than 3 percent of those parents chose to transfer their children to a school meeting all federal requirements.

In Title I schools, at least 40 percent of students qualify for the federal free and reduced-lunch program.

"Most parents prefer to stay in their (neighborhood) school," said Susan Wright, the district's director of Title I schools. "They believe in their schools. ... And they know if their child gets sick, they live close by and can come see them."

Results for how the district did under federal guidelines this past school year were released Thursday. The school system showed a marked improvement from the 2005-06 school year, with more than half of the district's campuses meeting federal benchmarks. The district had 173 schools pass all federal standards, compared with 115 passing schools for the 2004-05 school year. That year, more than two-thirds of the district's schools failed to meet federal guidelines.

The national law calls for 100 percent of the nation's students to perform at or above their grade level by the 2013-14 school year.

Patricia Saas, the district's director of No Child Left Behind programs, said the district prefers that parents answer the district's request by Aug. 23, but will accommodate parents until the first day of class on Aug. 30. Parents are asked to return a postmarked letter to the Title I Department and inform officials whether they want to be transferred to one of two passing schools the district has offered them.

Saas said the district tries to accommodate parents by keeping transfer schools within the same region of the school in which their children are zoned. But many parents have the misconception that because their child attends a school that is labeled failing for two consecutive years, they are allowed to transfer to any school in the district.

The Title I Department will contact schools to let them know they can expect to have new students this fall. Parents must enroll their children into the school to which they transfer.

Of the parents who had their children transfer to a passing school for the 2005-06 school year, the average length of their commute was 20.7 miles.

Superintendent Walt Rulffes said No Child Left Behind is in need of "serious revision."

School performance is based on 37 categories, some of which include ethnicity, socioeconomic status, students whose primary language isn't English and special education students. If a school fails to meet standards in one of the categories, the entire school fails. A school also fails if it does not achieve a 95 percent attendance rate in every category. The law is up for reauthorization in 2007.

Rulffes emphasized that although some schools might have failed to meet federal standards, they are still good schools. He said parents should visit the school the district is offering them a transfer to and speak with school personnel to see if the move is the right one for their children.

He said sometimes students are offered transfers to a school that does not provide the same services as a failing school.

If a school has failed to meet federal requirements for three consecutive years or more, the federal government provides financial assistance so the school can offer tutorial services to its students.

"The focus of No Child Left Behind is important and we don't want to lose that," Rulffes said. "A school is not a failing school because it has not met No Child Left Behind targets. To judge the entire school's performance by one subgroup or because someone didn't take the test that day because they were absent does a terrible injustice to a school."