Updated: Virginia Receives Waiver from Controversial Federal Education Law
Virginia superintendent announces U.S. Department of Education has granted the state a waiver to No Child Left Behind.
The state superintendent announced on Friday that Virginia schools and school divisions no longer will need to meet “arbitrary and unrealistic” benchmarks outlined in federal law mandating that all students achieve grade-level proficiency by 2014.
“Virginia schools and school divisions can now focus their energy and resources on implementing the state Board of Education’s rigorous new content standards and assessments without contending with outdated and often counter-productive federal requirements and rules,” Virginia Superintendent of Public Instruction Patricia Wright said. “The commonwealth will continue to hold schools accountable for closing achievement gaps but schools won’t be subject to a system of increasingly unrealistic annual objectives.”
The waiver allows the state Board of Education to establish “challenging but attainable goals,” according to Wright, which will focus on increasing overall student achievement and student achievement in demographic subgroups.
Alexandria City Public Schools Superintendent Morton Sherman said: "I am so pleased that the onerous provisions of what I call 'No Child Left Untested' have been changed. The high ideals of NCLB have never been realized in implementation because of the negative approach of this law. We will work closely with our staff and families to explain the implications for ACPS."
City Councilman Rob Krupicka, who also is a member of the state Board of Education, said on Friday that he’s pleased with the change.
“It gives [Alexandria City Public Schools] more flexibility in how it spends federal money…and takes away prescriptive punishments for school districts that are not meeting achievement goals. The overly prescriptive requirements created limited options for how you can transform schools.”
He added that NCLB still needs to "go away," but the announcement is good news.
School Board Chairman Sheryl Gorsuch said the waiver approval "will end the intensive duplicate planning that was necessary with current rules in place while new rules were pending."
She added that accountability with new benchmarks demonstrating growth in student achievement "is a more realistic and beneficial way to measure student progress."
The School Board will be briefed next week on the final approved changes that affect ACPS, according to Gorsuch.
"Relief from unsuccessful NCLB requirements, such as mandatory Supplemental Education Services from third party vendors, will be a welcome outcome so that we can focus resources on students in ways that are proven to improve achievement," she said.
Annual benchmarks will be set with the goal of reducing the failure rate in reading and mathematics by 50 percent — overall and of each student subgroup — within six years. In contrast, NCLB, as passed by Congress in 2001, requires all students — regardless of circumstance, disability or current achievement level — to demonstrate grade-level proficiency in reading and mathematics by 2014.
Virginia’s Education Department will continue to report as it has since 1999 under the Standards of Learning program, which are annual school accreditation ratings in September based on overall achievement in English, mathematics, science and history and high school graduation and completion.
Anthony
3:08 pm on Friday, June 29, 2012
While the article doesn't make this clear I presume this puts an end to school choice for those areas served by underpeforming schools like Jefferson-Houston?
Sharon McLoone
3:12 pm on Friday, June 29, 2012
Thanks for your comment Anthony. I think the details of exactly how this will impact ACPS are still being determined. However, I do believe it will limit school choice.
Rob Krupicka
4:16 pm on Friday, June 29, 2012
I believe school choice will be something the local school district will have to decide on for itself. Given the significant crowding issues at most Alexandria schools, choice has been very limited in recent years due to space constraints.
Mike Urena
5:42 pm on Friday, June 29, 2012
Rob, limited or not parents wants choice - at least I do and I'm sure I'm not alone here. Parents will simply, and rightly, opt out of ACPS if forced to send their kids to failing schools like Jefferson-Houston. I have limited expectations that either ACPS or City Council will satisfy my preferences here but I hope we aren't told that since choice is "very limited" there's no real harm to removing it.
Larry McDorchester
4:21 pm on Friday, June 29, 2012
One question I have for Mort Sherman: "Why shouldn't we test all of our students?" I agree that the benchmarks set under NCLB are unreasonable. Still, isn't it a good thing to know if our students are close to grade level in reading and math? Would Sherman prefer that we go back to the pre-NCLB days and ignore the Achievement Gap?
Joseph M.
7:21 pm on Friday, June 29, 2012
With due respect to Krupika: "The overly prescriptive requirements created limited options for how you can transform schools."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see transforming schools in ACPS.
Why aren't we trying charter schools in Alexandria. While the results are mixed for whether charter schools have improved educational outcomes, they haven't made it worse. It's worked for New Orleans post-Katrina. ACPS is not exactly on an upward curve so Alexandria needs to give charters and vouchers a chance. The city could even save money if the voucher was only, say, 80% of the astronomical average cost of educating a child in ACPS.
Edmund Lewis
8:57 pm on Friday, June 29, 2012
A few points overlooked when discussing "achievement gaps." One is that an assumption is made that all things are equal in the lives of students and that school is the lone variable which would lead to changes in academic success. This is simply false. Students spend on average just over 900 hours within the confines of our public schools.That leaves a little over 7200 hours outside of the school. Where is there the most room for change which will impact the academic achievement of our students? It is a farce which has been pushed on this generation of parents that our public education system can address and work against all which ails the students who enter the schoolhouse doors. The work must begin at home and in the neighborhood and continue in the school building. Another point ignored is the method by which school systems attempt to demonstrate a "closing of the 'achievement gap.'" There are multiple ways of addressing differences between the performance of groups. One method is to keep one group static and elevate the performance of the other group(s). Another method is to decrease the performance of a group while increasing the performance of another group(s). If all students were being challenged one would expect to see performance indicators rising for all groups, even if those data points were separated. What does the data suggest is occurring in ACPS? Another item missed in this mess is that we now view children as just groups of arbitrary numbers. Shame on us all.
Dennis Auld
10:11 am on Saturday, June 30, 2012
Here is another perspective on NCLB. Two key members of the Dept. of Education, who initially supported NCLB, came to look at it differently.
“There was always something slightly insane about No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the ambitious education law often described as the Bush Administration's signature domestic achievement. For one thing, in the view of many educators, the law's 2014 goal — which calls for all public school students in grades 4 through 8 to be achieving on grade level in reading and math — is something no educational system anywhere on earth has ever accomplished. Even more unrealistic: every kid (except for 3% with serious handicaps or other issues) is supposed to be achieving on grade level every year, climbing in lockstep up an ever more challenging ladder. This flies in the face of all sorts of research showing that children start off in different places academically and grow at different rates.
Add to the mix the fact that much of the promised funding failed to materialize and many early critics insisted that No Child Left Behind was nothing more than a cynical plan to destroy American faith in public education and open the way to vouchers and school choice.”
If you want to read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1812758,00.html#ixzz1zHkjT1Xc
Jay H
3:13 pm on Sunday, July 1, 2012
I could be mistaken - but this doesn't end SOL testing- since it is used by the state for graduation and state accreditation. These scores won't be used against a school - It will be the curriculum based measurements that are being created and presently used each quarter. So those mainly affected it seems will be teachers (more pressure) and parents (less choice).