Federal

Washington State Could Prove Test Case on Waiver Consequences

By Alyson Klein — March 24, 2014 6 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

What would happen if a state that’s received flexibility from mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act gets its waiver yanked and has to revert to requirements—and penalties—of the outdated, much-maligned law? Washington state may provide the U.S. Department of Education and its NCLB waiver system with a first test case.

Pulling a state’s waiver would force the Education Department to make a series of logistically tricky, politically charged decisions on a range of issues, including how to transition back to the NCLB law’s antiquated accountability system, which measures schools based on achievement only, not student growth, and requires all students to be proficient on state tests by the current school year.

Riding Herd

The challenge for the department may be in ensuring that a wayward state doesn’t get off easy, while not disrupting popular policy improvements brought about by the waivers. Washington state has been called out on the carpet for failing to create a teacher-evaluation-system that requires districts to take state test scores into account. But it already has a strong track record when it comes to supporting its lowest-performing schools, a weak area of waiver implementation for many other states, according to Education Department monitoring reports.

If the department decides to pull Washington’s flexibility, it must make the experience “painful enough so that other states see losing a waiver as something that they don’t want to go through,” said Anne Hyslop, a policy analyst with the New America Foundation, a think tank in Washington, D.C. “It can’t just be a perfectly consequence-free scenario, but it also needs to reflect some common sense.”

Under Washington’s teacher-evaluation system, districts don’t have to use state assessments as a factor in gauging educator performance. They can rely instead on student outcomes on local tests. That’s not permitted under the federal department’s waiver system, which insists on state exams.

Lawmakers and state education chief Randy Dorn tried to pass a bill that would have required every district to use the state tests, but the legislature couldn’t get it over the finish line, due in part to lack of support from the Washington Education Association, a National Education Association affiliate. That won’t help the state get off “high-risk status": Washington was warned in August that it could lose its waiver if its evaluation system doesn’t start incorporating only state tests.

So far, 42 states and the District of Columbia have been granted waivers by the Education Department. They’ve been given the flexibility to try out accountability systems that gauge schools on the basis of student growth, focus the most stringent interventions on the schools most in need, and back off the law’s 2013-14 proficiency deadline, which is widely panned as unrealistic.

Washington isn’t the only state in a precarious position. Arizona, Kansas, and Oregon are also on high-risk status and in danger of losing their flexibility.U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told chief state school officers in November that “odds are” the department would “revoke a waiver or two or three.”

But the Education Department may not be ready to throw in the towel on Washington just yet. It is still working with the state, said Dorie Nolt, a spokeswoman for the federal agency.

Mr. Dorn, however, thinks the loss of the waiver may be a foregone conclusion.

“The understanding is that they have to hold the line,” Mr. Dorn said of the Education Department. But he acknowledged that he’s not sure yet what waiver revocation could mean for his state. “This is new territory,” he said.

At a minimum, Mr. Dorn is hoping the state can hang on to its accountability system, which takes into account student growth.

David Powell, the executive director of Stand for Children Washington, an advocacy organization, also likes the waivers’ focus on student progress. But he notes that if the department pulls the state’s flexibility, two accountability systems would be far from ideal.

“I would like to hope that there’s nothing preventing Washington from continuing to calculate and report student-growth data,” he said. But he acknowledged that it could “become confusing for teachers and parents and others involved in education.”

Districts in Washington have a financial stake in the department’s decision. Those with schools that aren’t making adequate yearly progress, or AYP, under the NCLB law may have to begin setting aside money for school choice, tutoring, and professional development. In Washington state, that could total nearly $40 million, Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, has estimated.

Whatever the department decides to do in Washington will affect a lot of schools, said Chad Aldeman, who served in the Education Department and worked on waivers. Seventy-two percent of schools in Washington didn’t make AYP in 2010-11, according to Education Department data, he noted. That percentage has probably only climbed since then, he estimated.

Mr. Aldeman said that under its waiver, the state must get 77 percent of all its students proficient in reading in the 2013-14 school year. But under the NCLB law, that figure would skyrocket to 100 percent proficiency. “That is a pretty large jump,” said Mr. Aldeman, who is now an associate partner at Bellwether Education Partners, a non-profit consulting firm in Washington.

The NCLB law requires a series of increasingly serious penalties for schools that fail to make AYP. Those that don’t meet their targets two years in a row must offer school choice. After three years, they must offer tutoring, and continued failure could lead to bigger and more dramatic interventions, such as governance changes.

If the department decides to pull Washington’s waiver—or any other state’s—federal officials would need to work out the NCLB compliance timetable for schools that would have gotten at least a two-year reprieve, the New America Foundation’s Ms. Hyslop said.

Washington state could restart the NCLB clock, putting every school back at square one, which would mean no penalties at all for any schools for at least a year. Or the administration could essentially proceed as if Washington never got a waiver in the first place, meaning a broad group of schools would be subject to harsh penalties.

Ms. Hyslop prefers a middle ground: The department could offer a specially tailored waiver for so-called “ex-waiver” states, allowing them to focus aggressive remedies on schools that are struggling the most.

Other Options

Mr. Aldeman had a similar suggestion. Waiver revocation could open the door for the Education Department to trot out a solution employed under the Bush administration: differentiated consequences. That could allow a state like Washington to sidestep the NCLB law’s penalties, which most experts agree haven’t been very effective, and continue its own interventions in the lowest-performing schools, he said.

There’s another solution, Ms. Hyslop said. The department could revoke only the part of Washington’s waiver that requires all teachers to be highly qualified—meaning they hold a bachelor’s degree and state certification. She reasoned that the state is primarily delinquent only on the teacher portion of its waiver agreement.

But that might not be enough of a stick.

“If that’s the only consequence, the department wouldn’t be sending a strong signal about how important teacher evaluations are,” she said.

A version of this article appeared in the March 26, 2014 edition of Education Week as Washington State Could Present Test Case on Waiver Stumbles

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
School & District Management Webinar
Harnessing AI to Address Chronic Absenteeism in Schools
Learn how AI can help your district improve student attendance and boost academic outcomes.
Content provided by Panorama Education
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Science Webinar
Spark Minds, Reignite Students & Teachers: STEM’s Role in Supporting Presence and Engagement
Is your district struggling with chronic absenteeism? Discover how STEM can reignite students' and teachers' passion for learning.
Content provided by Project Lead The Way
Recruitment & Retention Webinar EdRecruiter 2025 Survey Results: The Outlook for Recruitment and Retention
See exclusive findings from EdWeek’s nationwide survey of K-12 job seekers and district HR professionals on recruitment, retention, and job satisfaction. 

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Federal 3 Ways Trump Can Weaken the Education Department Without Eliminating It
Trump's team can seek to whittle down the department's workforce, scrap guidance documents, and close offices.
4 min read
Then-Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump smiles at an election night watch party at the Palm Beach Convention Center, Nov. 6, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla.
President-elect Donald Trump smiles at an election night watch party at the Palm Beach Convention Center on Nov. 6, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla. Trump pledged during the campaign to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education. A more plausible path could involve weakening the agency.
Evan Vucci/AP
Federal How Trump Can Hobble the Education Department Without Abolishing It
There is plenty the incoming administration can do to kneecap the main federal agency responsible for K-12 schools.
9 min read
Former President Donald Trump speaks as he arrives in New York on April 15, 2024.
President-elect Donald Trump speaks as he arrives in New York on April 15, 2024. Trump pledged on the campaign trail to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education in his second term.
Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via AP
Federal Opinion Closing the Education Department Is a Solution in Search of a Problem
There’s a bill in Congress seeking to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education. What do its supporters really want?
Jonas Zuckerman
4 min read
USA government confusion and United States politics problem and American federal legislation trouble as a national political symbol with 3D illustration elements.
iStock/Getty Images
Federal Can Immigration Agents Make Arrests and Carry Out Raids at Schools?
Current federal policy says schools are protected areas from immigration enforcement. That may soon change.
9 min read
A know-your-rights flyer rests on a table while immigration activist, Laura Mendoza, speaks to the Associated Press' reporter at The Resurrection Project offices in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood on June 19, 2019. From Los Angeles to Atlanta, advocates and attorneys have brought civil rights workshops to schools, churches, storefronts and consulates, tailoring their efforts on what to do if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers show up at home or on the road.
A know-your-rights flyer rests on a table while immigration activist, Laura Mendoza, speaks to the Associated Press' reporter at The Resurrection Project offices in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood on June 19, 2019. Immigration advocates advise schools to inform families about their legal rights as uncertainty remains over how far-reaching immigration enforcement will go under a second Trump administration.
Amr Alfiky/AP