In Cali - US ED SEC. Duncan Treads on States' Rights - Whew, it's smoggy out there!

By awarding a No Child Left Behind Act waiver to eight California districts, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has embarked on an experiment that redefines the federal role in school accountability—and that is sparking criticism from across the political spectrum and questions about whether the new flexibility goes too far.   www.edweek.org, http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/08/16/01corewaiver.h33.html?tkn=TQPF3qjhijjjcGavvTp016HgunOrRE9JxaoJ&cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS1

The State of Delaware, and the public schools contained therein, are already recipients of the No Child Left Behind Waiver.  It's the mechanism that gives our state freedom from the acheivement targets set under the Bush-era NCLB.  From a parental standpoint, the new waiver was most noticeable in two domains:

1. In general, parents of children in DOE-defined failing schools:are no longer offered the ability to choice their student - with transportation provided at district cost - to a higher performing school; and
2. The waiver allowed districts to cease offering the "free" tutoring provided at district cost by state-approved SES providers to students in the same identified failing schools.  Notably, at least 10 years of implementation failed to produce any data that supported the efficacy of these niche providers.

For schools/districts, the waivers really meant something else entirely - freedom from punishment for the failure to meet the federally mandated performance targets of the 2013-14 school year.

To be sure, these waivers came with strings - the kind the bind and garrote public education - including a state-made commitment to implement a teacher-evaluation system linked to student test scores. (For more on that cataclysmic abomindation, go read Kilroys.) 

And because some states refused the anti-educator-pro-federal infusion practice demanded by the waiver, Arne Duncan, created a new mechanism to insert his pro-capitalist stranglehold on those states who dared to defy his offer -  a district-direct waiver application process, a gift specific to these eight Cali districts. 

The first-of-its-kind waiver, good for one year, essentially allows the eight districts to set up their own accountability system outside of the state of California’s—and largely police themselves through their own board of directors. 

The districts, known as CORE, for California Office to Reform Education, will operate under a new school rating system that will eventually count nonacademic factors, such as absentee rates and parent surveys, as 40 percent of a school’s grade...

For the group of California districts, the most important flexibility the waiver brings is financial. A waiver will free up about $150 million in federal funds a year among the districts—money that’s now locked up in providing interventions such as tutoring and school choice in schools that do not meet annual academic targets...

As a result, districts are already canceling many of their contracts with tutoring providers, but electing to keep school-choice-based transportation—at least for now...

More strikingly, Duncan is finally getting some substantial push-back from his usually supporters for the creation of a program that essentially strips states of their rights and morphs his federal department into somthing not-quite-illegal, but borderline unconstitutional.

State schools chiefs collectively oppose the waiver as “usurping” state power. State and local teachers’ unions in California objected to being left out of the waiver process. Many members of Congress, particularly Republicans, are irritated that Mr. Duncan has used his waiver authority to hand out a special waiver just for eight districts in one state....

 Many education policy experts sharply disagree about this district waiver’s effect on the traditional relationship between local districts, their states, and the federal government. Public schools are primarily a state responsibility, and are financed mostly by state tax dollars.

What’s more, the NCLB law mainly governs the relationship between the federal government and the states. The law is the current version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

“For the secretary to unilaterally dispense with 30-plus years of state-led accountability is incredible,” said Andy Smarick, a partner for Bellwether Education Partners in Washington.