Waivers Supplant 'No Child'
By Fawn Johnson

Last week, Nevada became the 33rd state to receive a waiver from No Child Left Behind regulations, which means that more than 1 million students will be covered by state-designed accountability systems heading into the 2012-13 school year, according to the Education Department. Four states are still waiting for approval, and 13 have yet to apply. The next date for applications will be Sept. 6.

The sheer volume of states that are operating under the waivers signals the end of the era of the groundbreaking education law. In its wake, there will be a host of state-designed programs that may or may not provide the answer for overhauling the elementary and secondary education system. (Congress cannot be counted on to update the law, although Education Secretary Arne Duncan made yet another plea for legislative action last week.) Meanwhile, an analysis of the approved waivers from the Center for American Progress found that states did not articulate "new innovations" in their applications, a troubling notion. CAP found that the states were, however, able to articulate their ongoing goals to improve their schools, a helpful exercise.

The impact of the waiver program now will depend on the states following through with their goals. "Any of the innovations noted in this report will fade quickly if they are not implemented with fidelity and persistence," the CAP report said. What's more, the shifting political winds could undermine even the most simplistic changes as educators and state officials wait on a possible new administration. It's hard to imagine officials taking chances now if the next guys in the White House aren't going to care about their efforts.

What are the best outcomes that could come from the waiver program? Where are the pitfalls, if any? What will accountability look like in one year? Two years? How will the 13 states that have not requested waivers (Texas is the biggest) fare under the 2014 benchmarks set by No Child Left Behind? What will be the legacy of No Child Left Behind in the wake of the waivers?




Coercion Versus Genuine Flexibility
By Kevin Welner

Merriam-Webster defines “waiver” as “the act of intentionally relinquishing or abandoning a known right, claim, or privilege.” (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/waiver)

The dictionary also offers a definition of “coerce:” (1) to restrain or dominate by force … (2) to compel to an act or choice … (3) to achieve by force or threat. (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/coerce)

With those definitions in mind, here’s how Joy Resmovits in the Huffington Post explained the U.S. Department of Education’s NCLB waiver process, which the Department refers to as NCLB “Flexibility:” “In exchange for the waivers, states had to agree to a plan that included parts of the Obama education agenda, which includes ‘college- and career-ready’ standards and grading teachers, using, in part, students’ standardized test scores.” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/19/no-child-left-behind-waiver_n_1684504.html)

To me, this “Flexibility” policy sounds a lot more like “coercion” than “waiver.” Even while it acknowledges that the current NCLB rules are unreasonable and harmful, Secretary Duncan’s Department is not simply waiving the offending provisions; it’s releasing states from those rules only when those states agree to adopt the Department’s favored policies.

Moreover, the Education Dept. hasn’t just dictated a set of state policies. It’s also dictating timelines and details, as discussed in this article concerning Georgia, Hawaii and Illinois:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/10/no-child-left-behind-some_n_1764126.html.

This is an unusual and even Orwellian definition of “Flexibility” (no need to consult a dictionary on that one). And, in the wake of the spending clause (Medicaid) element of the Supreme Court’s Sebelius (Obamacare) ruling, there’s a slight chance that the coercion rises to the level of unconstitutionality.

Perhaps the most interesting situation arises from California, which educates more than 10 percent of the nation’s public school children. California has told the U.S. Department of Education that it does indeed want a waiver, but it has asked that any conditions reflect the state’s own reform direction and its own fiscal restraints. It has resisted in particular the demand that states adopt and implement particular types of new high-stakes evaluation systems for teachers and principals. As noted above, the Duncan Education Department is insisting that the evaluations be based in part on student test-score growth, which the state has stated would be expensive, “contentious and distract[ing] from more positive initiatives.”http://www.edsource.org/today/2012/california-may-seek-a-waiver-from-no-child-left-behind-law-on-its-own-terms/8384 and http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/12/local/la-me-no-child-20111112

Thus far, the Department of Education has not granted California a waiver. The Department certainly knows that NCLB is nonsensically sanctioning California’s schools (the law has forced the state to label 63% of Title I schools as “needing improvement”). But while encouraging the state to apply for “Flexibility” waivers, the Department has demonstrated very little if any actual flexibility in response to California’s desire to set its own reform path.

Bush’s NCLB and Obama’s reform agenda have a great deal in common. They both are grounded in test-based accountability and school choice principles that hope to use accountability, threats and market incentives to drive school reform. They both are also grounded in the idea that the federal government should coerce states to follow Washington DC’s favored policy agenda.

NCLB forced a complicated and extensive series of changes in U.S. schools, and not all of those changes were bad. Similarly, the Obama administration’s favored policies have had powerful effects on our schools, and some of these have (in my view) been positive. But neither set of changes has been well-grounded in research evidence and neither has, taken as a whole, moved schools in a beneficial direction. Maybe it’s time for some genuine flexibility?