Panel recommends continuing districts’ waiver from NCLB

Source: California Function to Reform Education

Each summer, CORE holds multi-24-hour interval summer institutes for teachers in member districts on developing strategies and assessments for education the Common Core standards in math and English language arts.

An oversight commission is recommending that the U.S. Section of Instruction again extend a waiver from the No Child Left Backside law to six California schoolhouse districts, collectively known as CORE.

Some of the districts had non met the borderline for improvements, particularly for adopting key parts of a new teacher evaluation system, but the committee concluded that all had shown enough overall progress to merit an extension.

"In guild to support progress and continual learning, the Oversight Console chose to recommend connected implementation of the waivers then that all districts, even those struggling to make progress in certain areas, are supported in furthering this important work," David Plank, the committee'south chair, wrote in a June 18 letter to federal officials. The seven members of the committee, which included researchers and representatives of school and civil rights organizations, endorsed the waivers following an all-day review before this month.

Core, the California Part to Reform Teaching, is a nonprofit arrangement that the districts formed to promote their work. The districts include 3 of the state's largest unified districts: Los Angeles, Long Beach and Fresno, along with Santa Ana, San Francisco and Oakland. Together they enroll virtually 1 meg students.

Federal officials volition consider the committee's recommendation; a decision on whether to extend the waiver is expected before the start of the new school year. Rick Miller, Core'south executive manager and a former California deputy state superintendent, said he was optimistic the waiver would be approved for one or three years. Cadre also has asked federal officials to permit other California districts that join Core to seek the waiver, starting in autumn 2016. Those districts would have to brand the same commitments to comeback, which include extensive data collection and analysis and collaboration with fellow member districts.

U.South. Secretarial assistant of Educational activity Arne Duncan has granted 42 states a wavier from the constabulary in response to a deadlocked Congress' failure to meliorate or rewrite No Child Left Behind, formally known as the Elementary and Secondary Pedagogy Act. Then far this yr, Duncan has extended the waiver for an additional three or, in some cases, four years, for a dozen states and Washington, D.C., with more approvals expected in coming months (see hither and here).

The biggest do good of the waiver is giving school districts discretion over xx pct of federal Title I coin, which provides funding for depression-income children, that they would have spent transporting students to better-performing schools and paying outside tutoring companies. States with waivers likewise take more discretion to decide how to amend their lowest-performing schools.

In 2013, after Gov. Jerry Brown and the State Board of Education balked at the conditions that Duncan required for a land wavier, the CORE districts sought and got the just waivers awarded to districts nationwide. Sanger Unified, where a longtime superintendent retired, and Sacramento Metropolis Unified, where resistance among teachers to the waiver was strong, were initially part of the waiver but have since dropped out while remaining affiliated with CORE.

In September 2014, the U.S. Department of Education gave a 1-year waiver extension to the districts. While acknowledging that they faced "very challenging work," the department put the districts on "high-risk" status because they had not completed piece of work on some accountability metrics and had non progressed far plenty in meeting requirements for a new teacher evaluation organization, including the use of educatee test scores. CORE is non alone; other states too have struggled with teacher evaluations, and Duncan in August 2022 said they could seek a year's extension.

The Cadre superintendents and Miller say their distinct arroyo offers a model that could do good California as the land board and other policy makers create a new school accountability system based on multiple measures, rather than using standardized tests lone. As one condition of the waiver, CORE districts are creating a School Quality Improvement Alphabetize, which volition base of operations lx per centum of a schoolhouse's score on students' academic operation and 40 percent on indicators of school climate and culture and the difficult-to-quantify factors of perseverance and attitudes toward learning. The initial scores are due out in the fall.

The districts had to fulfill three cardinal requirements, with multiple elements, to satisfy the conditions of the waiver:

• Implement the Common Core standards, including creating districtwide acting tests during the year to show progress and providing training for all teachers and administrators. The Core districts were among the offset in California to ringlet out the new standards, hold joint trainings and design and share circuitous practice assessments. They are now amid those furthest along in implementing the standards.
• Implement the School Quality Comeback Index and show comeback amidst the districts' lowest-performing schools, called priority schools, and schools with the widest gaps in achievement among student subgroups, chosen focus schools. CORE's approach was to pair teachers and principals from the 47 priority schools with high-performing schools, called reward schools, both inside districts and with other Cadre districts, so that they could share successful practices. All schools were to grade "communities of practice" – collaborative efforts among teachers to place a key problem at their schools and work to fix it. Some districts had few priority and focus schools, while Los Angeles Unified had dozens operating inside a circuitous structure of regional sub-districts. Two members of the oversight committee, Celia Jaffe, vice chair of the Teaching Commission of the California Country PTA, and Brian Rivas, director of policy and government relations for the Educational activity Trust-Due west, expressed skepticism that the district had shown sufficient evidence of progress.
• Adopt evaluation systems for teachers and administrators that incorporate common guidelines, including measures of student learning. They should besides include teachers and principals in the development of the evaluation; have preferably four, but at least 3, rating categories; and provide meaningful feedback directed toward professional growth. Districts were supposed to have completed pilots of their evaluation systems in 2014-15 and, in the coming year, implement them districtwide for teachers who were scheduled to be evaluated.

 "I have been researching how to plough around depression-performing schools for 25 years. I have never seen greater accountability at a commune level than what I saw in these reports." – Jennifer O'24-hour interval

The differences amid districts were virtually pronounced regarding teacher evaluations. Long Beach already had a satisfactory system in place at the time of the waiver, and Fresno, following 200 hours of negotiations, is ready to motility alee. Only teachers in merely ane school in Santa Ana agreed to practise a trial run in 2015-16, a year behind the waiver timeline, and in that location is no commitment from the teachers union beyond that. Former Los Angeles Unified Superintendent John Deasy antagonized United Teachers Los Angeles by creating a pilot evaluation system without consulting the union. Talks started from scratch when he resigned concluding year. In the teachers contract ratified in May, the union agreed to add a third rating category– the minimum under the waiver – and to keep discussions next twelvemonth.

Oversight committee members said they recognized that some districts were out of compliance only agreed that cut off the waiver would be a worse option. Ending the waiver would remove leverage for comeback, said Manuel Buenrostro, a policy and programs officer representing the California Schoolhouse Boards Clan. "We should cite the fact that there are challenges, and districts demand more fourth dimension."

The oversight panel served as a check on the CORE districts' peer reviews. Administrators from ii teams made up of 3 districts each – San Francisco, Los Angeles and Oakland; and Santa Ana, Fresno and Long Beach – met three or four times over the twelvemonth to review districts' functioning data and self-evaluations. They graded the progress toward satisfying the weather of the waiver. The feedback from other districts led to revisions and helped analyze thinking, said Michelle Rodriguez, assistant superintendent of Santa Ana Unified.

Miller, CORE'south executive director, praised the process of peer evaluations and criticism as more than constructive than the traditional approach of  "checking boxes" to verify compliance. Members of the oversight panel agreed for the about function.

"I have been researching how to turn around low-performing schools for 25 years. I have never seen greater accountability at a commune level than what I saw in these reports," said Jennifer O'Day, a researcher and policy annotator with American Institutes for Enquiry who likewise chairs the California Collaborative on District Reform.

The seven oversight panel members had admission to hundreds of pages of peer reviews and conducted a half-hour presentation and discussion with each district before voting on the individual commune waivers. The vote in each case was unanimous, although Rivas, a last-minute fill-in, abstained from the vote on Los Angeles Unified, maxim he didn't have enough information well-nigh the commune's work to close the achievement gap.

The oversight panel was supposed to have representatives from a cross-section of fourteen organizations and government agencies. But Gov. Jerry Chocolate-brown, Superintendent of Public Education Tom Torlakson, and the California Teachers Association, which opposed the waiver, declined to send voting representatives. The State Board of Pedagogy sent an observer.

The only superintendent to nourish the 24-hour interval-long oversight meeting, Christopher Steinhauser of Long Beach Unified, made his position on the waiver extension articulate. The waiver, providing flexibility in Title I funding, shifting attending to "continuous improvement" and congruent with the transition to local control through the LCAP process "came at a perfect time," he said. "I am more excited at present nigh education than any time before in my life."

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Source: https://edsource.org/2015/panel-recommends-continuing-districts-waiver-from-nclb/82052