Minnesota Granted No Child Left Behind Waiver; Kline Opposes Move

President Barack Obama announced last week that Minnesota would be one of 10 states to receive a reprieve from the federal No Child Left Behind education law.

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

“My administration is giving states the opportunity to set higher, more honest standards in exchange for more flexibility,” Obama stated through a White House issued press release. “If we’re serious about helping our children reach their potential, the best ideas aren’t going to come from Washington alone.”

The move doesn't have full support from Capitol Hill, though, including Minnesota's Second Congressional representative, John Kline.

Kline, a Republican who is chairman of the U.S. House education committee, told the Star Tribune that he's opposed to the waiver issued by Obama.

“I have significant concerns about the administration’s waivers plan. Simply put, this plan does not constitute the long-term reform families, schools, and students need,” Kline said in November, according to the Star Tribune report. “It’s a temporary band-aid on a problem that must be resolved through legislation—not executive fiat. Right now, states facing budget strains are dedicating limited resources to meet new requirements dictated by the Secretary of Education that could easily be changed by Congress of the next administration."

The , laying out a plan in its place to reduce the achievement gap found via assessment tests over the next six years.

Meanwhile, Kline was also working on reforming NCLB. The Star Tribune reported he introduced two bills on Feb. 9 that would formally reform NCLB.

The Student Success Act and Encouraging Innovation and Effective Teachers Act, "would significantly reduce the federal footprint in education reform," according to the Star Tribune report. The legislation would also give districts greater flexibility, Kline said, by cutting or consolidating programs to free up funds and drop federal teacher qualifications, the story said.

Moving forward

The push from Minnesota, led by Minnesota Department of Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius, uses four measures of school performance, using 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.

Through those 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.

The punitive portion came, education leaders said, when an entire school was penalized (categorized as “not achieving AYP”) for one sub-category failing to reach its goal.

Instead, through its four measures, those sub-categories will attain the most assistance, Cassellius said.  

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

Education Secretary Arne Duncan said the current NCLB law, as written, causes narrowing of curriculum.

Northfield and AYP

The waiver is great news to Northfield's superintendent, Chris Richardson, who hasn't been a fan of the law since it was passed more than a decade ago.

He said with AYP primarily based on a student taking "one test in an hour or two on any given day in a year," it wasn't a fair way to assess if he or she had grown academically.

Moreover, he said schools and districts were unfairly classified as "failing" if only one or two subgroups failed to reach a target in a given year.

In many cases for Minnesota schools, including Northfield, students who were classified as special education or English language learner students were often two groups deemed not proficient for AYP. Richardson said those students are already federally defined as not proficient for their grade levels.

As schools faced multiple years in a row of failing to meet AYP, different sanctions were placed on them, which were mostly tied to money. Students in "failing" schools could opt to transfer to another school in the district if it had made AYP and have the district pay for the transportation or they could request the district to pay for tutoring. This, Richardson said, tied up money that would traditionally be used for instruction.

Three of  six schools achieved what state and federal standards set as adequate progress on reading and math tests for 2011.

Schools deemed to have made adequate progress were ,  and , according to state data.

Schools not making adequate progress were ,  and .

 and  also made adequate progress, according to the data.

The previous school year, only Northfield High School, ARTech and Prairie Creek made AYP, according to state records. 

Richardson said he's pleased to see multiple measures will be used to define student success.

"We think it's much more realistic."

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