Indiana granted No Child Left Behind waiver

Clark County

THE 10

These 10 states were granted waivers from the federal No Child Left Behind law Thursday:
• Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Tennessee. The only state that applied for the flexibility and did not get it, New Mexico, is working with the administration to get approval.
— The Associated Press

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February 9, 2012

No local schools were in danger of state takeover

By JEROD CLAPP Jerod.Clapp@newsandtribune.com The News and Tribune Thu Feb 09, 2012, 04:34 PM EST

NEW ALBANY — Indiana was one of 10 states granted a waiver from the federal No Child Left Behind law from President Barack Obama on Thursday.

Though school corporations are relieved from the standards of federal law — such as getting all students at grade-level proficiency in math and reading by 2014 — no schools in Clark or Floyd counties are listed as failing or in danger of state takeover.

The pressure will probably still be on the lowest-performing schools in states granted a waiver, but mediocre schools that aren’t failing will probably see the most changes because they will feel less pressure and have more flexibility in how they spend federal dollars, said Michael Petrilli, vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank.

Tony Bennett, state superintendent of public instruction in Indiana, said in a press release that the additional leeway granted by the waiver was a necessary change for Indiana.

“No Child Left Behind was a giant step forward for our nation’s schools,” Bennett said in a press release. “It brought accountability to a system sorely in need of a structure for driving results. However, as new advances in measuring student achievement and educator effectiveness have become available, the need for increased flexibility at the state and local level is more apparent than ever.”

Bennett said Indiana’s efforts to bring education reform are the biggest contributors to receiving the waiver.

Monty Schneider, superintendent for West Clark County Schools, said he doesn’t think anything will ease up for Indiana schools because of the waiver.

“The only reason Indiana got a waiver is because they have very stringent standards above and beyond [Adequate Yearly Progress under No Child Left Behind],” Schneider said. “It won’t make things any easier, it just changes some of the standards. It just does away with some of the unrealistic standards, such as 100 percent of students being able to [reach reading and math proficiency]. All schools were eventually going to fail because no one was going to reach that standard.”

For all the cheers that states may have about Obama’s action, the move also reflects the sobering reality that the United States is not close to the law’s original goal: getting children to grade level in reading and math.

Critics today say the 2014 deadline was unrealistic, the law is too rigid and led to teaching to the test, and too many schools feel they are unfairly labeled as “failures.” Under No Child Left Behind, schools that don’t meet requirements for two years or longer face increasingly tough consequences, including busing children to higher-performing schools, offering tutoring and replacing staff.

As the deadline approaches, more schools are failing to meet requirements under the law, with nearly half not doing so last year, according to the Center on Education Policy. Center officials said that’s because some states today have harder tests or have high numbers of immigrant and low-income children, but it’s also because the law requires states to raise the bar each year for how many children must pass the test.

In states granted a waiver, students still will be tested annually. But starting this fall, schools in those states will no longer face the same prescriptive actions spelled out under No Child Left Behind. A school’s performance will also probably be labeled differently.

State Rep. Ed Clere, who sits on the state education committee, said he’s glad to see Obama give states more control over decisions regarding education.

“The waiver will allow Indiana the flexibility to innovate and make decisions that are right for Indiana,” said Clere, R-New Albany. “Washington doesn’t have all the answers. Many of the solutions can be found here in Indiana and in our local communities.”

A total of 28 other states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have signaled that they, too, plan to seek waivers — a sign of just how vast the law’s burdens have become as the big deadline nears. Some conservatives viewed Obama’s plan not as giving more flexibility to states, but as imposing his vision on them.

Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., who chairs the House Education and the Workforce Committee, said Thursday that, “This notion that Congress is sort of an impediment to be bypassed, I find very, very troubling in many, many ways.”

On Tuesday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said this week that the administration “desperately” wants Congress to fix the law.

In an election year in a divided Congress, that appears unlikely.

Kline, speaking at an event at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said that in the House there was some bipartisan agreement on how to fix No Child Left Behind, but in many areas there was disagreement. He said later in the day he would release Republican-written legislation that seeks to restore states’ authority in education.

California Rep. George Miller, the committee’s senior Democrat, has said such partisanship “means the end” to No Child Left Behind reform in this Congress. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who chairs the Senate committee on education, has said he believes it “would be difficult to find a path forward” without a bipartisan bill in the House.

A Senate committee last fall passed a bipartisan bill to update the law. The administration expressed concerns with it, and it did not go before the full Senate for a vote.

— The Associated Press contributed to this report.