“The current law means that each group of kids, whether they are children with a disability, or African-American, or poor kids, have attention paid to them, because the schools are accountable for each and every group,” said Jennings. “But what the states are asking is that they all be lumped together.”
The Bush-era law is aimed at making sure 100 percent of students reach proficiency in math and reading by 2014, a goal states are far from achieving. As that year draws closer, more and more schools are expected to fall out of compliance, subjecting them to penalties that range from after-school tutoring to closure.
While there is bipartisan agreement the 2002 law needs to be fixed, Congress has not passed a comprehensive reform. President Barack Obama announced in September that states could apply for waivers and scrap the proficiency requirement if they met conditions designed to better prepare and test students.
The 11 states that applied for the first round of waivers were Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Tennessee. Many more states are expected to request waivers in the second round—meaning all eyes will be on the first approvals.
The Center on Education Policy analyzed all the waiver requests and found that in nine of the 11 states, almost all decisions on penalties and interventions would be based on the performance of two groups: all students and a “disadvantaged” group that would replace the current system of separate categories of students according to race, ethnicity, income, disability, and English language proficiency.
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States strengthening their teacher evaluation standards
Those separate categories are at the heart of what NCLB aimed to correct—vast achievement gaps between white, black, and Hispanic students, between the affluent and low-income—and what most agree is the problem with the law: If any one of these groups of students does not meet the state’s annual benchmarks for proficiency in reading and math, the school is labeled as “failing.”
In a letter sent Jan. 17, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., urged Education Secretary Arne Duncan to require strong accountability measures and ensure civil rights and educational equity gains under NCLB are not lost.
“We fear that putting students with disabilities, English language learners, and minority students into one ‘super subgroup’ will mask the individual needs of these distinct student subgroups,” they said.
In the feedback provided to states by a panel of peer reviewers in December, many states were praised for plans to institute college and career-ready standards and develop teacher evaluation systems that take into account student growth—two hallmarks of the Obama administration’s education policy. The panel’s concerns varied, but meeting the needs of all groups of students was one consistent theme.
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