UPDATED JULY 6

Today, the U.S. Department of Education announced five more waiver winning states – Arkansas, Missouri, South Dakota, Utah, and Virginia - bringing the total number of states operating their own school accountability systems in lieu of NCLB to twenty four.

With nearly half of states on the waiver train, it’s a good time to pause and take stock ofContinue Reading »

Flickr photo by AlaskaTeacher

UPDATED 2/15: Although slightly behind schedule, President Obama and the U.S. Department of Education finally announced the first round of states to receive ESEA waivers today. Ten of the eleven early-bird applicants – Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Tennessee – willContinue Reading »

On Friday, Rep. John Kline (R-MN), Chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, released the final two pieces of House Republicans’ piecemeal strategy to overhaul No Child Left Behind, and reactions to the bills are trickling in. The Committee had already approved legislation relating to school choice, funding flexibility, and program consolidation. While the latter two were approvContinue Reading »

Flickr photo by skyloader

The Center for American Progress released the first analysis of the initial 11 ESEA waiver applications that moves beyond the contents of each waiver proposal to the merits of a state’s application. As noted here, and here, and here the report calls out Massachusetts and Tennessee for submitting particularly well-crafted proposals and Continue Reading »

This Thanksgiving, those of us following the ESEA reauthorization debate have a lot to be thankful for. Who’d have thought the last few months would be so exciting?

We have a bipartisan (sort of) Senate ESEA Reauthorization bill passed out of the HELP Committee. Depending on your point of view, you could be thankful for a lot of things here: a) that a reauthorization bill has gotten thisContinue Reading »

“Split Classroom-Achievement Gap” Copyright © by Amanda Long.

More than any other provision of the Harkin-Enzi ESEA bill (synopsis here),  the rollback of federal accountability for student performance in schools and districts (no more AYP and targets for student achievement, no strict consequences for schools that fail to make AYP) has gotten the most attentioContinue Reading »

Yesterday, Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) released a long-awaited bill to reauthorize No Child Left Behind. After a series of Republican bills in the House and Senate as well as the Obama administration’s ESEA Waiver plan, the draft legislation represents the first bipartisan effort to rewrite NCLB in this Congress and is the product of months of compromise between Harkin and the Senate Health, EducContinue Reading »

California Gov. Jerry Brown is one of the most powerful anti-student testing politicians in the country. So, when given the chance to sign into law a new system of education accountability that would place far less emphasis on test scores, what did Brown do? He vetoed it. In his veto message over the weekend he called the bill “yet another siren song of school reform” that “relies on the same qContinue Reading »

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

This morning, President Obama, Secretary Duncan, and the Department of Education formally announced the details of the new NCLB flexibility package for states that are raising standards for students, teachers, and schools. For the truly wonky, the details can be found here.

The Waiver Wire has clearly been talking Continue Reading »

So I know I said I’d be doing these posts on a somewhat-daily basis. Thanks to the Senate Republicans’ new ESEA proposals, this is a little late.

As I wrote in the last Waiver Wire (read it!), requiring waiver winners to have college- and career-ready standards only takes you part of the way. No Child Left Behind was about more than standards – it required states to establishContinue Reading »