Spokane7
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February 21, 2012 in Opinion
Editorial: No Child Left Behind waiver best path for now
Last week, the state of Washington decided to seek a waiver from the expectation of perfection in the No Child Left Behind Act. The federal law flunks on many fronts, but its failure is particularly epic when it comes to the deceptively benign-sounding metric called Adequate Yearly Progress.
NCLB was adopted in 2001. It called for perfection by 2014. AYP is the measurement the feds use to determine whether schools are making progress toward what can only be called the impossible dream for most of them. Not only must all students post passing scores in math and reading, but all subsets of students broken out into myriad categories, such as race, must show progress toward that goal for schools to avoid being labeled “failing.” Under the current law, AYP will become moot in two years, because all schools are mandated to be “perfect” by then, or else face counterproductive sanctions.
This is absurd, and even advocates of NCLB figured it would be rewritten by now. It was set to be reauthorized in 2007, but Congress has dawdled.
So, the Obama administration started advertising waivers to the law that retained the principles of accountability and reform while dumping the unrealistic goals. Eleven states were recently granted waivers. Other states waited to see what that process would be like. Last week, state schools chief Randy Dorn said Washington would be taking the plunge.
So does this mean the state has waved the white flag on accountability? Hardly. The lengthy and detailed draft proposal at the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction website shows that states must adopt many changes before the U.S. Department of Education will grant a waiver.
To ensure states aren’t backsliding on education reform, they must demonstrate a commitment to four areas: college- and career-ready expectations for all students, support for effective teaching and leadership, systems for rewarding or remediating educators, and the elimination of duplicate services.
The state has already taken significant strides toward reform, but its waiver application would be strengthened if the state Legislature were to pass a current bill that offers a meaningful way to evaluate teachers and principals.
The punishment meted out by No Child Left Behind would have the opposite effect of the law’s intent: to help those students who need it most. That’s because the law calls for diverting 20 percent of Title I money, which goes to the most impoverished schools, to address the “inadequate” progress in meeting an unrealistic goal. This would occur even if the schools showed remarkable improvement.
Dorn notes that if the punishment were waived, the state would still focus its attention on those needy students in an attempt to close the achievement gap.
Make no mistake; the U.S. Department of Education is encouraging end runs around NCLB. If that bothers you, then Congress is the culprit for failing to make adequate yearly progress on a revision.
We can’t blame the state for wanting to take a more realistic path.
Gloomy prediction in Egypt 
mikeln on February 21 at 7:38 a.m.
This program was allways about failure. Bush and his owners went out of thier way to gut american education and succeded. This is what we get for electing a stupid man to head the country. One that was to stupid to know he was nothing more then a puppet.
brimjoh on February 21 at 8:54 a.m.
After your editorial on the search for a new superintendent many of us hoped that you might be migrating toward a more informed position on education. Alas, you have again returned to support of the status quo…
“…but its waiver application would be strengthened if the state Legislature were to pass a current bill that offers a meaningful way to evaluate teachers and principals.”
What we have in this legislation, that you see as a step in the right direction, is more “Blame the teacher” twaddle.
Written by and for over-paid and generally obstructionist education administrators by WSSDA (Washington State School Directors Association), this legislation carves in stone a complete release of responsibility for student outcomes for those administrators.
Wake up and smell the coffee, please.
Here in Spokane, as in most of Washington, curricula and pedagogy (instructional method) are chosen and forced on teachers by superintendents and administrators. Yet, the well-orchestrated “Blame-the-Teacher” campaign would have student outcomes be the responsibility of the teachers forced to use these tools.
Tools, by the way, empirically demonstrated to FAIL in producing academic achievement. Certainly proven to be a failure here in Spokane. A simple look at remediation rates at local colleges for math and English puts the lie to any claims that we are adequately educating our students…
Again, wake up and smell the coffee - How about supporting legislation that holds administrators accountable for student outcomes, as well as teachers? Where are the hue and cry for a “meaningful” way to evaluate administrators and their poor choices of curricula and pedagogy?
“Waiting for Superman” - Blame the teacher, blame the union, blame the parent, blame the student, blame poverty, blame ANYONE but the folks making huge salaries to select broken tools.
Teachers, such as myself, SHOULD be evaluated on our students’ outcomes - if and when we are given the freedom to choose and apply the full range of tools available to do our job. If you and the WSSDA want to give me only one tool, and a broken one at that, you should not be surprised when the outcome is flawed.
The tragedy here is that we have excellent teachers, great students, and parents who truly want their children to learn - but administrators have not allowed that to happen. Follow the money and you’ll see why.
Accountability, indeed…
laurierogers on February 21 at 9:44 a.m.
It’s nice to see the newspaper wading into a real issue on public education. However, you demonstrate a misunderstanding of the situation.
The president is not being benevolent in offering waivers on NCLB. This is bribery, or blackmail, but in any case coercion. Rather than saying to the states, “Yeah, we know that was impossible; we’ll figure something else out” and letting them all breathe easy while a better system is put in place, the president and his secretary of education are USING that impossible mandate to further their own mandate – an arguably illegal one, at that.
In order to get a waiver from NCLB, the states have to do more than show commitment to “reform,” they have to adopt the Common Core State Standards (euphemistically and incorrectly called “college-and-career-ready expectations”); and the teacher assessment plan (a federal idea of how to blame teachers for all education ills while letting administration off the hook); and charter schools (notice the new movement in Washington State for charters); and the national data system that will share student data between agencies and across state lines without parent knowledge or consent.
Also on the federal education agenda, nationalized tests and nationalized curricula in all subjects. Many states already are using the CCSS to adopt more reform math. Clearly, their students will NOT be college or career ready. And this plan will cost this country a trillion dollars. (Just multiply 14,000 districts by whatever you think the plan will cost the smallest district. It adds up fast, doesn’t it?)
This isn’t a nice thing the president is doing: We’ll let you out of an impossible situation, but only if you do what we tell you, today and from now on.
As for the state waving the white flag on accountability, the state has been doing that for decades. The promised waivers are just another white flag. It isn’t our fault. We didn’t do it. We can’t change it. It’s up to the feds. Call them. We’re doing it because we have to.
And as for backsliding? It’s hard to backslide when you don’t have much farther to fall. We have bad curriculum, wasted dollars, a self-interested administration, unhelpful testing, inefficient teaching methodologies (about to be mandated, folks), and micromanaged teachers. Children are “graduating” at higher rates, sure — most without the academic knowledge they need to be successful in postsecondary life. And all our legislators can do, it seems, is “fund education first,” push for an online Common Core initiative, and remove most of the graduation requirements.
Feel for our truly excellent teachers, saddled with this ineffective system, browbeat with wrongheadedness, and soon to be blamed for the entire mess.
Then, turn your attention to the children. Every day is a frustration. Every day is a “discovery” of things they can’t possibly know. Every day is “you failed,” “you didn’t get it,” “maybe math isn’t your best subject,” “maybe you need an IEP,” “maybe you just aren’t trying hard enough.” And most of the kids who manage to escape then test into remedial arithmetic in college, which about half will fail.
It’s nice to see you talking about public education. How about if you learn something about the Common Core and what that federal push is all about? Check out the Tenth Amendment; even the Department of Education says it makes education a state responsibility. Check out 20 USC 3403, that section of the US Code which says it’s illegal for the U.S. Department of Education to push any programs on the schools.
Check out Cato: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/war-against-the-core/ or Education Next: http://educationnext.org/the-common-core-math-standards/ or Jay Greene: http://jaypgreene.com/2012/02/16/common-core-quality-debated/ or Truth in American Education: http://truthinamericaneducation.com/
Then, please tell the people what you learned about your government. Your public is waiting.