Education Week - August 21, 2013 - 21

EDUCATION WEEK AUGUST 21, 2013 www.edweek.org
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Guidance on Waiver Renewals
Expected Soon, Ed. Dept. Says
By Charles Edwards
Washington
Federal guidance is likely to be
issued by the end of the month for
states to renew their waivers from
provisions of the No Child Left Behind
Act, the head of the U.S. Department
of Education’s Student
Achievement and School Accountability
office told state officials at a
recent conference here.
Speaking at the annual summer
meeting of the National Association
of State Title I Directors,
held here July 30-Aug. 2, Monique
Chism, the director of the achievement
and accountability office,
said the document was undergoing
final clearance by the Office
of Management and Budget. This
is the last step before the department
can release it to the states.
So far, 40 states and the District
of Columbia have received
waivers giving them relief from
increasingly unworkable portions
of the law, such as its lockstep
school- improvement process
and its 2014 deadline for universal
student proficiency. Of these
waiver participants, 34 states and
the District of Columbia were approved
in the first two application
rounds; their waivers expire at the
end of school year 2013-14. The
five states approved earlier this
year in the third round—Alabama,
Alaska, Hawaii, New Hampshire,
and West Virginia—are not yet up
for renewal.
“We anticipate that submission
[of renewal applications] would
occur in January and March,” Ms.
Chism told the Title I officials. “We
are going to have two windows
for that. Our intent is to do this
quickly and early, so if there are
any legislative changes or policy
changes required, you guys have
enough time to work on that.”
“We are working to make this a
‘light lift,” she added.
Monitoring Rounds
Also entering into the Education
Department’s waiver-renewal decisions
will be the results of its first
two monitoring rounds (termed
“Part A” and “Part B”), she said. The
Part A round examined each state’s
readiness to implement its waiver
plan and relied entirely on a “deskmonitoring”
process involving conference
calls and a review of statesubmitted
documents. That round
has been completed. The Part B
round—involving a mix of on-site
and desk-monitoring—will focus on
the implementation status of three
specific elements of each state’s application,
two chosen by the Education
Department and one by the
state. The department is wrapping
up the pilot stage of Part B, with
Colorado and Mississippi acting
as pilots for on-site monitoring and
Connecticut and New Jersey participating
in desk-monitoring.
Ms. Chism said the department
also plans to conduct “data runs” on
various elements of states’ waiver
plans, particularly relating to state
accountability and support systems.

“We are asking you to make
changes to your actual plan, so
we hope that that plan is a living
document that you are using in the
state to help guide your efforts,” Ms.
Chism said. “We worked very hard
to streamline the renewal process.
You will actually be updating your
plan and adding some information
to some of the new areas.”
So far, only California, Montana,
and Nebraska have chosen not to
apply for NCLB law waivers, while
North Dakota and Vermont withdrew
their requests. The department
on Aug. 6 approved a separate
district-level waiver application
submitted by a consortium of eight
large California school districts.
Charles Edwards is a freelance
education reporter based in
Arlington, Va.
ADVERTISEMENT
IS IT GOOD FOR THE KIDS?
Crucial Conversations About the
Common Core
By Gene R. Carter, Executive Director, ASCD
This school year is pivotal to the future of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), and
educators play a key role in determining their ultimate success or failure.
States are making significant headway
implementing the K–12 English language
arts and mathematics standards at all
grade levels. At the same time, numerous
misconceptions and myths about the
standards are spreading rapidly across the
states, threatening to derail this progress.
Much of the misinformation centers on the
perceived role of the federal government in
this state-led effort, with some characterizing
the Common Core as national standards
and an example of federal overreach that
usurps state and local decision making
about what and how students should learn.
Those fallacies have spurred a growing
number of state lawmakers, particularly
those affiliated with the Tea Party movement,
to reconsider their state’s support
for the standards and introduce legislation
that slows or repeals CCSS implementation.
In some cases, their efforts have been modestly
successful.
Indiana, for example, recently enacted a
law that pauses CCSS implementation until
statewide hearings and a new standards
study are conducted over the next several
months. At that point, the state board of
education will be required to reconsider its
decision to adopt the standards. Michigan
passed a new FY14 budget that prohibits
state spending on CCSS implementation or
assessments unless a bipartisan legislative
panel currently examining the standards
reverses the measure before it takes effect
on October 1. Similar opposition has gained
momentum in other states, such as Missouri,
Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
Such pushback has created incredible
confusion and uncertainty among educators
and the public about the staying power
of the standards. Moreover, pausing or
repealing CCSS implementation translates
to very real disruptions in classrooms,
where teachers have already adjusted
their instruction so that it aligns with
the standards and students have already
been exposed to the new, more rigorous
expectations.
We all knew educators would be crucial
to the Common Core’s success. After all, the
standards are meaningless unless educators
embrace them, understand them, and
make the requisite instructional shifts to
effectively teach to them. But it has become
equally important for the profession to
communicate the purpose and importance
of the standards to families and the rest of
the public. To help educators become that
trusted voice, ASCD’s next issue of Policy
Points, to be released in the coming weeks,
dispels those aforementioned Common
Core myths, addressing widespread questions
about federal involvement and local
control of schools as well as other misunderstandings
related to the standards’ relationship
to curriculum, their cost to states,
student privacy, and more.
The profession’s responsibility doesn’t
end with implementation. Education leaders
must anticipate the inevitable questions
that will arise as students are tested on the
standards. The two consortia developing
CCSS-aligned assessments—the Partnership
for Assessment of Readiness for College
and Careers (PARCC) and Smarter
Balanced—will pilot their tests this year in
preparation for their full and official administration
in participating states during the
2014–15 school year.
In the coming months, educators must
help students and parents understand the
considerable differences between the Common
Core assessments and previous state
tests. First, education leaders will have to
curb the natural inclination to compare the
new scores with those from prior years;
these are completely new assessments
based on entirely new standards and, as
such, will set a new benchmark for student
performance. In addition, educators need to
prepare the public for the tests’ heightened
rigor and more meaningful results. As with
previous assessments, states will use the
new tests for school accountability determinations,
but the tests will have the added
purpose of clearly demonstrating students’
reading and math readiness for entry into
college and the workforce. The results will
undoubtedly be more useful for students
and their parents but could lead to difficult
conversations, particularly if students don’t
score as well as expected.
Finally, we all must remind stakeholders
and the public that robust standards alone
won’t prepare the nation’s students for
success in college and their careers. If we
don’t attend to each child’s basic needs and
overall well-being, it won’t matter how high
the standards are or how well a teacher
brings them to life in the classroom. Only a
whole child approach to education—which
ensures that students are healthy, safe,
engaged, supported, and challenged—will
help our students meet our highest expectations
and realize their fullest potential.
Look for the next issue of Policy Points, dispelling Common Core myths, at www.ascd
.org/policypoints and visit www.ascd.org/commoncore.
21
1703 North Beauregard St. • Alexandria, VA 22311-1714 USA • Web: www.ascd.org
1-800-933-ASCD (2723) or 1-703-578-9600 • Fax: 1-703-575-5400 • E-mail: member@ascd.org

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Education Week - August 21, 2013

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