Editorial: No Child Left Behind waiver best path for now

Last week, the state of Washington decided to seek a waiver from the expectation of perfection in the No Child Left Behind Act. The federal law flunks on many fronts, but its failure is particularly epic when it comes to the deceptively benign-sounding metric called Adequate Yearly Progress.

NCLB was adopted in 2001. It called for perfection by 2014. AYP is the measurement the feds use to determine whether schools are making progress toward what can only be called the impossible dream for most of them. Not only must all students post passing scores in math and reading, but all subsets of students broken out into myriad categories, such as race, must show progress toward that goal for schools to avoid being labeled “failing.” Under the current law, AYP will become moot in two years, because all schools are mandated to be “perfect” by then, or else face counterproductive sanctions.

This is absurd, and even advocates of NCLB figured it would be rewritten by now. It was set to be reauthorized in 2007, but Congress has dawdled.

So, the Obama administration started advertising waivers to the law that retained the principles of accountability and reform while dumping the unrealistic goals. Eleven states were recently granted waivers. Other states waited to see what that process would be like. Last week, state schools chief Randy Dorn said Washington would be taking the plunge.

So does this mean the state has waved the white flag on accountability? Hardly. The lengthy and detailed draft proposal at the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction website shows that states must adopt many changes before the U.S. Department of Education will grant a waiver.

To ensure states aren’t backsliding on education reform, they must demonstrate a commitment to four areas: college- and career-ready expectations for all students, support for effective teaching and leadership, systems for rewarding or remediating educators, and the elimination of duplicate services.

The state has already taken significant strides toward reform, but its waiver application would be strengthened if the state Legislature were to pass a current bill that offers a meaningful way to evaluate teachers and principals.

The punishment meted out by No Child Left Behind would have the opposite effect of the law’s intent: to help those students who need it most. That’s because the law calls for diverting 20 percent of Title I money, which goes to the most impoverished schools, to address the “inadequate” progress in meeting an unrealistic goal. This would occur even if the schools showed remarkable improvement.

Dorn notes that if the punishment were waived, the state would still focus its attention on those needy students in an attempt to close the achievement gap.

Make no mistake; the U.S. Department of Education is encouraging end runs around NCLB. If that bothers you, then Congress is the culprit for failing to make adequate yearly progress on a revision.

We can’t blame the state for wanting to take a more realistic path.