First, the good news: this week the U.S. Department of Education (USED) notified us that it approved Kentucky's
application for a one-year extension of our Elementary and Secondary Education
Act/No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waiver flexibility. The extension will run
through the 2014-15 school year.
The bad news is that we are still operating
under an NCLB waiver, as we have been since the 2012-13 school year. Education
Secretary Arnie Duncan offered the waivers to states due to the inability of
Congress to reauthorize No Child Left Behind (which was due for reauthorization
in 2007). State chiefs and local school superintendents were very excited about
the waivers as an opportunity to move public education forward; while the
number one priority was and always has been for Congress to reauthorize NCLB.
There are several pros to the NCLB waiver,
especially for Kentucky. The federal waiver requirements were
an excellent match to our Senate Bill 1 (2009) requirements for new standards, new assessments, a new
accountability system, and professional development and support for educators
to implement these new requirements. When Sec. Duncan announced the waiver
requirements, Kentucky moved quickly to apply. With the waiver in hand we were
able to implement new standards, assessments, and a single accountability
system for reporting school results, rather than having two systems – one for
federal accountability, one for state – as we had in the past. Also, the
federal waiver provided tremendous flexibility to our school districts on how
to spend federal funds. All in all, we felt that the waiver was an excellent
idea in the short term; however, no one thought waivers were a good idea in the
long run.
As election seasons started to roll around, as
if on cue, there was a lot of criticism of Sec. Duncan and the U.S. Department
of Education. I for one found it hypocritical that Congress would complain
about the waiver process when it was Congress' failure to reauthorize No Child
Left Behind that led to the process.
While the initial waiver process was
something we supported in Kentucky, it has become problematic. When the state
chiefs talked with Sec. Duncan about what would happen at the end of the
initial waiver period, we recommended a "streamlined and expedited" process
for one-year extensions. It remained our hope as state chiefs that, in the
meantime, Congress would reauthorize NCLB. That has not
happened.
There is significant evidence from many
states that the waiver extension process has not been streamlined. State chiefs
have reported to me and our Kentucky experience has shown that our staffs spent
hundreds of hours in preparing what was supposed to have been a streamlined
application (our initial waiver extension request was almost 200 pages). Also,
our staff spent many hours in conference calls and rewriting our waiver
application based on questions raised from USED staff. Click here
if you’d like to read it.
Nor has the waiver extension process been
expedited, as we were promised. We
submitted our extension request May 1 and it was mid-August before we got word
on its status. Our initial waiver took
less time to approve. In fact, of the 42
states that originally obtained waivers and the 31 that have submitted waiver
extensions, to date, 13 are still waiting for word from USED on their status.
In many cases, school has already started and school districts are not certain
of which set of rules they will be governed by for the school year - NCLB or
the waiver.
Now, USED is asking us to give feedback on
the process for a two-year waiver extension for school years 2015-16 and
2016-17.
As one state chief, speaking only for
Kentucky, it is time to end this process. It is time for Congress to act.
We need a stable long range plan, not a series of cobbled together waivers that
take away staff time from the work of improving education for all children.
Next week, I will provide more insight as to
why I believe the current waiver process represents a major federal intrusion
into the rights of each state to develop, implement, and manage the public
education of the state.
