Politics & Government

Effects of No Child Left Behind Waiver, Possible Reforms Still Unclear for District 196

The district, others in Minnesota awaiting more details after the state received a waiver of federal requirements.

District 196 officials still are anticipating more details about how the waiver of certain federal education requirements will affect them.

The President announced late last week that Minnesota’s own proposed reforms to its standards and accountability measures would meet requirements to replace the federal education law called the No Child Left Behind act, which was passed nearly a decade ago.

Minnesota is one of 10 states to receive a reprieve from NCLB.

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The number of schools across the state that were failing the No Child Left Behind standards was climbing, said Steve Troen, director of teaching and learning for District 196. Schools had been expected to have 100 percent of students proficient in math and reading by the year 2014 under NCLB's Adequate Yearly Progress standards. 

"It's still early," Troen said. "It will be interesting to see what evolves.”

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Minnesota will have to outline new, “bold” reforms to improve teacher effectiveness, grade school accountability and close the achievement gap in social and ethnic categories.

“If we’re serious about helping our children reach their potential, the best ideas aren’t going to come from Washington alone,” Obama said through a White House-issued press release.

Obama granted the federal waivers after “waiting too long for reform,” he said. The administration requested rewrites to the national act in 2010.

Troen said the Minnesota Department of Education plans to give schools more information next week.

Minnesota requested a waiver from NCLB last year, laying out a plan in its place to reduce the achievement gap found via assessment tests over the next six years.

The movement, led by Minnesota Department of Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius, uses four measures of school performance, utilizing current tools such as the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment tests, Adequate Yearly Progress measures, a year-over-year measurement of student growth, and school district graduation rates.

Troen said it's "welcomed" by school officials to have multiple measures of success, rather than being tied to a single indicator—meeting AYP or not—that was based mostly on test scores.

But the waiver, Troen said, doesn't mean Minnesota schools won't have high targets for student achievement, or systems in place to make sure they're attained. Minnesota's proposal also includes a goal to reduce the achievement gap by 50 percent in six years, he said.

"The state's still working closely with schools that aren't meeting those targets," Troen said.

Through the four measurements, three school designations will be created. Schools scoring in the bottom 5 percent will be designated as “Priority Schools,” where the state will focus on developing and implementing a turnaround plan for that school, or school district.

The next bottom 10 percent of schools, as measured by the state, will be tagged as “Focus Schools.” These schools will be asked to work with their respective school district and the MDE to identify which subgroups are creating an achievement gap, and target an improvement plan to address specific needs.

Finally, schools in the top 15 percent will be identified as “Reward Schools.” These schools will be asked to share best practices with MDE, and will be “publicly recognized” at the state level for their work.

Another effect of the waiver could be more flexibility for schools to get Title I funding—given to schools with a certain percentage of children from low-income families—directly to classrooms, "which is a good thing," Troen said.

Managing the funding, which until the waiver had to be set aside for specific uses, took lots of administrative time, he said.

U.S. Rep. John Kline, who represents Apple Valley and the rest of Minnesota's Second Congressional District, said, however, that .

He recently introduced two bills that would instead reform NCLB.

Troen said not knowing what will happen at the federal level with NCLB reforms adds an extra unknown; this year, schools are still subject to NCLB, and next year they'll be under the waiver, but after that the situation could change.

"We’ll wait to see what’s down the road," Troen said.


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