The only district-level waiver from many of the mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act will be around for at least one more year: The U.S. Department of Education has extended the waiver for California’s so-called CORE districts and taken them off “high-risk status.”
Last year, the department told the districts— Fresno, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, and Santa Ana—they were at risk of losing their waiver, partly because of teacher-evaluation issues and delays with the districts’ system for gauging school progress.
The CORE districts were among the first to experiment with using social-emotional factors in their accountability system. And they have gotten creative when it comes to school turnarounds, by allowing low-performing schools to partner with better performers that have similar demographics and challenges.
