. . . Instead of fostering progress and accelerating academic improvement, many NCLB requirements have unintentionally become barriers to State and local implementation of forward-looking reforms designed to raise academic achievement. Consequently, many of you are petitioning us for relief from the requirements of current law. One of my highest priorities is to help ensure that Federal laws and policies can support these reforms and not hinder State and local innovation aimed at increasing the quality of instruction and improving student academic achievement.
It is hard to argue with this reasoning, but will the waivers free us up from the onerous requirements of NCLB without adding additional requirements? Once again, it depends upon who you read. For example, in this Washington Post blog by Monty Neill, executive director of FairTest one comes away thinking this may not be a good idea.
The Obama administration’s new No Child Left Behind “flexibility” plan offers our struggling public schools a leap from the frying pan to the fire.
President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan provide no relief from No Child Left Behind’s massive over-use of testing — more testing than in any other advanced nation. In fact, they are demanding more, not less, testing. They provide no relief from NCLB’s mandated misuse of test scores for school accountability. And their plan will push states into adopting highly flawed and inaccurate uses of student test results to judge teachers and principals.
Or this from Senator Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.“The truth is the secretary has the states over a barrel. Most governors want a waiver. Almost every state, they’ll be asking for a waiver,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who has introduced a Republican education package that would remove most of the national standards and leave them to the states. The waivers “run the risk of 100,000 schools being supervised by a national school board,” he said.
What must states do to receive the waiver that can be awarded as early as January? They must adopt college and career-ready standards. They don’t force states to adopt the Common Core, but they are promoted as college and career-ready. Second, they must have in place rigorous interventions to turn around the bottom 5% of schools and an additional 10% of schools with low graduation rates or large achievement gaps. Third, they must have in place a teacher and principal evaluation system that in some way uses student achievement data.
What do states get in return for agreeing to these waiver conditions? They are free of the requirement to have ALL children at standard in math and reading by 2014, a goal that never had a chance of being reached. Schools would no longer be labeled as failing if this provision of the law is waived. As shared above by Neill however, the testing requirements remain in place.
What next? In the short term the political battle and finger pointing will continue. The Republican response has been swift and negative as seen in this NY Times article.
“In my judgment, he is exercising an authority and power he doesn’t have,” said Representative John Kline, Republican of Minnesota and chairman of the House education committee. “We all know the law is broken and needs to be changed. But this is part and parcel with the whole picture with this administration: they cannot get their agenda through Congress, so they’re doing it with executive orders and rewriting rules. This is executive overreach.”
An obvious question then would be if we all know it is broken why have we not been able to fix it considering the law has been due for a rewrite since 2007? There will be much political capital to gain as election season heats up and the major players use NCLB to seek votes. For us, it means more waiting to see what eventually will land on us from above. In the meantime we will continue to move forward on what we believe will support success for more young people in our system.
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