First round of NCLB waivers
Torlakson sees constraints not flexibility
In early March, the State Board of Education will decide whether California will apply for the waiver from the No Child Left Behind law that the federal Department of Education awarded to an initial 10 states on Thursday. While not ruling out that possibility, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson hinted strongly Thursday that he remains inclined not to go there.
“California has rejected No Child Left Behind as a broken system that has not worked for our schools or our students,” Torlakson said in a statement. “The law’s failures should prompt a thorough reassessment of the federal role in education, not merely the substitution of one set of inflexible requirements for another.”
Inflexibility must be in the eye of the beholder. In announcing the initial waivers yesterday, President Obama emphasized that flexibility is what makes his offer for a waiver attractive. “So when it comes to fixing what’s wrong with No Child Left Behind, we’ve offered every state the same deal. We’ve said, if you’re willing to set higher, more honest standards than the ones that were set by No Child Left Behind, then we’re going to give you the flexibility to meet those standards. We want high standards, and we’ll give you flexibility in return.”
Eleven states applied for the NCLB waiver in the first round last fall; all but New Mexico received it, and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said yesterday that its approval was likely. Three other states – Florida, Oklahoma, and Georgia – have received conditional approval, pending actions by their state legislatures or governing boards. The other seven states with waivers are Massachusetts, Tennessee, New Jersey, Indiana, Minnesota, Kentucky, and Colorado. Twenty-eight additional states and Washington, D.C., have indicated that they intend to seek a waiver by the next deadline, at the end of this month. The deadline for the next and final round hasn’t been set but is expected to be in June.
Congress, President at loggerheads over NCLB renewal
Obama has said he is moving ahead with a waiver because Congress has failed for five years to fix NCLB; in a presidential election year, it’s also unlikely to. In exchange for committing to action in three broad areas, the administration would release states from NCLB’s primary requirement – that all students be proficient in math and reading by 2014 – along with the harsh penalties that schools have faced for failing to meet annual targets toward that goal. Districts would be free to spend Title I money that would have gone toward NCLB compliance on their own plans for student achievement. That’s one reason why a number of superintendents, including those from Los Angeles Unified, Long Beach, Sacramento City, and Fresno, have written the State Board or testified in support of a waiver. Another reason is that the waiver would free them from a rigid accountability system that will soon classify nearly all Title I schools as academic failures, even those making significant progress by the state’s own metric, the Academic Performance Index.
But Torlakson and Gov. Jerry Brown argue that broke California has no money to implement new commitments to reforms, especially on the three-year deadline that a waiver would demand. And Brown, like Torlakson, has been criticizing federal overreach in areas they – along with Republicans in Congress – say should best be left to the states.
In exchange for the waiver, states would have to:
- Commit to establishing career and college readiness standards. California has done this by adopting the Common Core standards. Implementing them would require training teachers and buying textbooks and materials. The State Department of Education projects the cost at more than $800 million, although federal officials have indicated they’d work with California on a realistic timetable.
- Create and implement plans for turning around the worst-performing 5 percent of Title I schools and an additional 10 percent of schools with wide achievement gaps, while recognizing top-performing schools, too. Here again, the State Department of Education estimates high – about $400 million – based on existing federal turnaround models and $235 million in paying teachers for collaboration time. The federal guidelines suggest no dollar figures, and California could present a less costly approach.
- Put in place a system to evaluate every teacher and principal using multiple yardsticks that include a “significant” use of test scores. This requirement is most troubling to Brown and the State Board as well as critics who say Obama is overstepping his authority by exceeding the scope of NCLB. The much maligned and inadequate Stull Act, the 40-year-old state law governing teacher evaluations, won’t meet Obama’s criteria for evaluations. While there appears to be universal agreement that teacher evaluations should be strengthened, there’s no consensus as to how, so it’s unclear whether the Legislature will pass an alternative this year.
Although most districts evaluate principals regularly, there is no state requirement, so this would be a new state mandate. (Correction: The Stull Act applies to all “certificated” employees, so principals are covered by current law. Note to John Mockler: You were right.)
As for the cost, Torlakson’s Ed Dept. pegs the net cost of a new evaluation system at $639 per teacher, although, here again, that figure, minus a law, is conjecture – and probably high. If all of the state’s 305,000 teachers are evaluated yearly, that’s nearly $200 million. An NCLB waiver would apply to every school, not only those receiving Title I dollars.
By contrast, Democratic Assemblymember Felipe Fuentes, sponsor of AB 5, the primary teacher evaluation bill now in play, puts the total cost at closer to $30 million to $35 million ; subtract the current $19 million statewide cost of the Stull Act, and the net cost to the state would be $16 million, an estimate that may be too low and would depend on how often teachers are evaluated, whether peer review is included in the process and whether there is follow-up professional development.
Cost aside, neither Brown nor Torlakson may want a huge battle over teacher evaluations – and the use of test scores – in an election year, with the governor depending on California Teachers Assn. money and support for his tax initiative in November.
Election-year calculus infuses the debate over the waiver in Washington, too. At some point, Congress must reauthorize the next-generation NCLB that will supersede conditions of a waiver. Some urge caution in seeking something that could vanish.
Others argue that the state should go for a waiver now, while there is a window of opportunity to push a California-centric version of school reform. Obama and Duncan might not be in office after November anyway to force the state to keep its promises, the argument goes.
What the State Board will argue won’t be known for a few more weeks.
How about the State releases the “proven” methods that have worked to improve student performance with the demographics of the lowest performing schools. Then it can be determined, based on evidence from California schools, what to do in those schools, estimate the cost, etc., and get to work.
But no … that would mean actually using the CALPADS/longitudinal data we already have. It would also mean facing the fact that some teacher are much more effective then others.
Cost of teacher evaluations? Isn’t the principal already required, as part of the job description, to get in there with a pen and paper/form and observe? Test data is already sent to the school. How difficult and costly can tasks that were once considered routine now be – especially with the implementation of technology for record keeping?
Teachers are already taking 5 days of the 18o student contact days, as well as negotiating lower student contact time so that they have preparation time.
CA’s position just sounds like endless rhetoric.
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The press release from the White House says:
ten states have agreed to implement bold reforms around standards and accountability will receive flexibility from the most burdensome mandates of the federal education law known as No Child Left Behind.
If the White House considers them “burdensome mandates,” why don’t they release all schools from them? Isn’t it kind of horrible to leave any schools under them?
I am neutral on the long term adoption of Common Core in California, but a crash adoption of it here makes no sense educationally or financially. In some states, their academic standards are dreadfully low, and adopting Common Core may in fact be urgent. I see no evidence that adopting Common Core say next year would have any significant positive effect on student achievement in California; the adoption makes sense mostly to create a more uniform national curriculum and the economy of scale that may eventually provide.
I’m still wondering how we’re supposed to use test scores to evaluate our kindergarten teachers.
If we use student test scores to evaluate Arne Duncan, so far he appears to be a failure. I hope the President will consider that as part of Duncan’s evaluation.
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I haven’t had time to review states’ applications, but my sense is that Duncan is fast retreating from his insistence on using test scores as a major part of evaluations. I think states could interpret “significant” however they choose: 5 percent, 10 percent, 50 percent of an evaluation, and the test scores wouldn’t have to be CSTs. The Dept’s Asst. Secretary told the State Board last month that Massachusetts is using test scores as a “check” on evaluations using other metrics and not as a factor in the evaluation itself.
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Test score based evaluations should be a deal-breaker. That will make things worse, not better. If CA really believes NCLB is broken we should refuse the money, opt out altogether and instead do what we think is right.
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Hi John, it would be helpful to understand where your feeling about his retreat from test scores is coming from. I dont understand why it would be included as a stipulation if they didnt mean it. Their other policies are quite clear, including incentivizing expanding charter schools. A waiver from NCLB that is based on this is basically saying, ‘ok, we wont punish your school if you score low, instead we’ll take it directly to your teachers.’ Thats pretty hard core if you ask me, especially from a government agency that is supposed to be pro-public education.
btw, Florida stipulated in their ‘rheeform’ law the percentage of evaluations that tests would play. For teachers it is ‘at least 50%’ (ie could be more). In earlier revisions of the law they even had at least 40% for school administrators and at least 30% for other school employees, though those non-teacher percentages may not have made it to the final bill. Note that they implied VA in the bill, though they also disallowed correcting for poverty.
I also find it difficult to imagine anyone would interpret ’significant’ as 5% or 10%, or anything in that range. In florida i’d be the 50% number was negotiated (as implied by the ‘at least’). But again, if they dont really mean it, why bother?
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Navigio: California should not follow Florida’s lead and need not. Florida is making a big mistake in basing a teacher’s evaluation 50 percent on state test scores, and I suspect it will prove unworkable. It will probably drive good teachers from the profession and lead to numbing test prep and cheating — a predictable behavior to wrong incentives. You can argue that President Obama and Arne Duncan encouraged Florida’s choice, at least early in the days of Race to the Top, but waiver flexibility allows wiser methods, and it will be California’s challenge to do so, waiver or not.
Massachusetts provides a better model, as detailed in its waiver application (starting on page 80). You can download the document from the US Dept. of Ed waiver site: http://www.ed.gov/esea/flexibility/requests
Massachusetts will separate the “impact on student learning” from an evaluation of a teacher’s classroom practice and effectiveness, which will include a self-evaluation, a professional growth development plan and observations. Teachers will be given one of four ratings: Exemplary, Proficient, Needs Improvement, or Unsatisfactory. A separate “judgment” — the impact on student growth — will be based not only on state assessments, when available, but also on at least one other “district-determined measure common across grades or subjects district-wide, such as student portfolios, capstone projects, and performances.” For teachers of grades or subjects not given state tests, two district measures will be used. Teachers will be graded low, moderate or high.
Teachers will be expected to have a moderate impact on student growth and at least a proficient rating: “The intersection of the two judgments determines the consequences for the individual being evaluated. Strong ratings and at least moderate impact on student performance is the expectation. Where the rating or professional practice is less than Proficient, the educator is placed on a one-year improvement plan with goals for student learning and educator practice. Failure to improve substantially after the year can lead to dismissal. A strong practice rating coupled with low impact on student achievement results in (a) a one-year improvement plan that focuses on the discrepancy between the two judgments and (b) requires the intervention of the evaluator’s supervisor.”
Massachusetts’ plan is a work in progress — this will be the pilot year — but it offers a more thoughtful approach, one that the federal waiver clearly allows.
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The notion that Washington has the answers to improving student performance in our state is preposterous. I’m surprised and appalled that so many intelligent people believe this nonsense. If the current US Department of Education had the answers, Chicago would be a high-performing school district…It isn’t, and there’s no new amount of compliance driven regs coming from the Potomac that will change that sad reality.
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Hi John, thanks for the detailed response. A couple things:
The eventual submission includes he text of the law in which the evaluation definition exists as well as state board meeting minutes from when it was approved. FWIW, the vote was not unanimous (9-2) and one of the dissenters voted against it because she was “[concerned that the regulations might create an incentive to teach to the test]“.
The regulations themselves are also interesting. While you’re correct that they try to ’separate’ the various measures, it is noteworthy that while in the section on evidence (35.07) standardized tests only consist of one of many different ‘measures’, the intended output of that entire section is:
(2) Evidence and professional judgment shall inform:
(a) the evaluator’s ratings of Performance Standards and overall educator performance; and (b) the evaluator’s assessment of the educator’s impact on the learning, growth, and achievement of the students under the educator’s responsibility.
And then in the section on performance level ratings, they felt the need to emphasize that test scores should not be the sole basis for the teacher assessment (35.08):
(3) The summative evaluation rating must be based on evidence from multiple categories of evidence. MCAS growth scores cannot be the sole basis for a summative evaluation rating.
Note that the summative evaluation is the overall ranking of the teacher. In addition, the law allows districts to create their own versions of all this as long as the method is ’similarly rigorous’.
Anyway, in theory, I agree with you that MA’s change intends to be multi-faceted, but one of the other things I noticed about this law is that tenure is based on the performance ranking. Im guessing that was really the intent here. Note that by some measures MA is already the highest ranking state there is (there are others who claim thats inaccurate based on their SAT results).
I would still like to understand if you feel there is something specific coming from the Feds’ side that makes you think they are intending to deemphasize test results. Is it just the fact that they accept proposals like those from MA?
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While the Torlakson/CDE cost estimates look high on their face, when one adds all of the other costs of complying with the larger terms of NCLB, it may not be worth it.
The so-called “highly qualified” teacher requirements are a huge drain and arguably do little or nothing to actually get qualified teachers working with the students who need them. Do we really need to switch to Common Core when we can’t afford to and when standards-based/systemic reform initiatives have proven so ineffective?
Then there is the ongoing federal compliance burden including Consolidated Applications, LEA plans, schoolwide Title I plans, the ridiculous Categorical Programs Monitoring process, extensive financial management and accounting/auditing, etc. And don’t forget the lovey list of general compliance mandates covering everything from affirmative action to prohibiting text-messaging while on the federal dole (www.cde.ca.gov/fg/fo/fm/generalassur2011.asp). Now Arnie Duncan wants to micro-manage teacher and principal evaluation too.
Perhaps it’s time for California to join forces with a few other key states to tell Washington to take their money and shove it. Better yet, tell them to leave the money here in California rather than tax us and squander it.
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