Following up on our FIRST . . .

My last post on Washington State being the first state to lose a NCLB waiver resulted in a few comments that included one from Scott where he shared a statement from State representative Reykdahl. Later, Amy Adams shared a post from Diane Ravitch's blog with additional quotes from Rep. Reykdahl that I will share below.  Though many would dispute the belief that the recent legislative decision was collaborative I believe that all would share that the process used in developing TPEP was a collaborative effort and that TPEP implementation is having a positive impact on teacher growth in our system.

I like what Scott shared.

“My message to President Obama and Secretary Duncan is that Washington State is committed to education reform that is collaborative, bipartisan, and focused on student success and teacher growth. Our legislative decision to reject the federal government’s demands was done with substantial deliberation and a deep respect for state and local control.

And, from the Ravitch post this part of his statement that captures my concern with the one size fits all strategy used by the federal department to force change.

“The bipartisan rejection of this federal government demand during the 2014 legislative session is a strong and unifying message that our state fully embraces our constitutional 10th Amendment guarantee to develop, fund, and administer our state’s education system as the citizens of the state of Washington and their elected representatives determine, not as federal officials deem it appropriate.

Finally, the following statement that captures for me the absurdity of holding our state, young people, and schools accountable to policy that should have been replaced seven years ago and that all realized would not be possible to achieve.

“No Child Left Behind is a failed policy of the Bush administration that focuses on student failure and school punishment. This is no way to run a public education system. Enacting bad policy at the state level as a result of bad policy at the federal level will not help schools – and certainly won’t help students – be successful.”

We had to wait two months for Secretary Duncan to officially revoke the letter and now we wait to understand how the archaic accountable measures of NCLB will re reimplemented in our state.