Waiver request OK’d for Indiana for ‘No Child’ rules – Post

BY Teresa Auch Schultz
tauch@post-trib.com

February 9, 2012 9:28PM

Teacher Anita Cox (far left) takes a question from junior Erik Nevarez, 17, (right, hand raised) before student presentations begin in an AP Psychology class at Hammond High School in Hammond, Ind. Thursday February 9, 2012. Indiana is among 10 states that are to get a waiver from the No Child Left Behind law. | Stephanie Dowell~Sun-Times Media


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Updated: February 9, 2012 10:27PM

Indiana was one of 10 states granted a waiver Thursday from federal No Child Left Behind rules after it promised to set higher standards and create new ways to measure what students are learning.

Local educators celebrated the end of what they called unattainable goals but expressed uncertainty about just what that new plan is or how it will affect the schools.

No Child Left Behind required that all students meet their reading and math levels by 2014. The 10 states granted the waiver — which also includes Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Tennessee — argued they should be exempted from this requirement in exchange for coming up with their own ways to prepare students for college and careers, along with a new evaluation system, rewards for schools that perform well and help for those that don’t.

Tony Walker, a Gary attorney who sits on the Indiana State Board of Education, said a new A-through-F grading system the board passed Wednesday was tied to why Indiana was granted the waiver.

“It puts Indiana at the forefront of education reform in the country,” Walker said of the waiver. “The U.S. Department of Education was very pleased with our assessment and accountability system.”

Indiana is now completely out from under NCLB and will no longer use the Annual Yearly Progress system, which tracked whether schools made certain levels of achievements, Walker said.

Schools that were kept from getting an A under Indiana’s old grading system because they didn’t meet AYP now can earn an A, Walker said, citing Munster and Hobart as two local examples.

Superintendents not so sure

However, several local superintendents are still confused as to what Indiana’s new plan fully entails, leaving them wary of what the future holds.

“I just think we need more details before I can say I’m elated,” School City of Hammond Superintendent Walter Watkins said. “I just need to know what I’m going to be facing.”

Watkins said there’s a chance the new system could be worse for Hammond schools. However, he said No Child Left Before was too stringent for most schools in the state to reach.

Merrillville Community School Corp. Superintendent Tony Lux said he had expected the new grading system for schools would likely be tied into the new plan, but he wasn’t sure how.

Lux said the fact that the state must still measure student achievement, reward high-performing schools and evaluate teachers and principals is a good sign.

“That’s a positive,” he said.

The concern Lux has, he said, is that the new evaluation model for schools would compare them to each other, meaning some schools would always be considered at the bottom compared to others, even if they all showed improvement.

Lux said some Merrillville schools were on pace to make their Annual Yearly Progress but that not all would have met the 100 percent goal by 2014.

Portage Township Schools Superintendent Michael Berta said the issue for Portage schools now is deciding how it will meet whatever new goals the state sets.

“One thing is clear in all this: What we’re talking about are results,” he said.

Berta said Portage would not have met the 2014 NCLB goal, especially considering that all students, including special education students, had to meet the goal. He called the original mandate of NCLB “unrealistic.”

Berta said the waiver for Indiana would be good, as long as the state creates a realistic way of measuring how much students learn.

Same deal for other states

Gov. Mitch Daniels and State Superintendent of Education Tony Bennett both praised Indiana’s wavier, saying in a separate release that NCLB was an important move but that states also needed flexibility.

“The waiver will make for a fairer system and one that focuses on what matters most: getting the whole system to perform better in terms of student learning,” Daniels said.

Across the rest of the country, just one state, New Mexico, that applied for the waiver did not get it. Another 28 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have signaled that they, too, plan to flee the law in favor of their own plan.

“We’ve offered every state the same deal,” President Barack Obama said. “If you’re willing to set higher, more honest standards than the ones that were set by No Child Left Behind, then we’re going to give you the flexibility to meet those standards.”

Obama said he was acting because Congress had failed to update the law despite widespread agreement it needs to be fixed.

Republicans have charged that by granting waivers, Obama was overreaching his authority.

The pressure will probably still be on the lowest-performing schools in states granted a waiver, but mediocre schools that aren’t failing will probably see the most changes because they will feel less pressure and have more flexibility in how they spend federal dollars, said Michael Petrilli, vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank.

On Tuesday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said states without a waiver will be held to the standards of No Child Left Behind because “it’s the law of the land.”

Some conservatives viewed Obama’s plan not as giving more flexibility to states, but as imposing his vision on them. Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., who chairs the House Education and the Workforce Committee, said Thursday that, “This notion that Congress is sort of an impediment to be bypassed, I find very, very troubling in many, many ways.”

Duncan maintained this week that the administration “desperately” wants Congress to fix the law.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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