This guest post is by Christine Wolfe, a former hill staffer and George W. Bush Administration appointee at the U.S. Department of Education who helped to craft NCLB and many of its regulations. She consulted on Fordham's recent ESEA Briefing Book.
Idaho's approach to NCLB implementation appears to be based on the hope that, at the end of the day, the Department of Education (ED) will simply adopt a ?non-enforcement? policy on NCLB, particularly with respect to requirements related to AYP and accountability. Such a policy would be similar to what it did in past years for accountability for Limited English Proficiency students and the highly qualified teacher deadline. [quote]
In many ways a non-enforcement approach could make more sense and could be more consistently applied across states than a complicated waiver strategy, especially given the thin (even non-existent) statutory authority to grant the broad waivers states really want, with the conditions that ED really wants.
Here's how it could work. The Department would issue a statement that, as a ?matter of policy? it will allow states to freeze their AYP annual measurable objectives (AMOs) for one year or so, or perhaps until reauthorization, without creating huge hoops to jump through to get that flexibility. Narrowly tailored non-enforcement on increasing AMOs and perhaps some of the most contentious requirements of NCLB could take some of the air out of the room on waivers, address concerns about the 2014 deadline for 100% proficiency, and deal with the ED-fueled perception that a tsunami of schools identified for improvement is approaching. It would do so while at the same time not creating incentives to further delay ESEA reauthorization, which would happen if States get to do everything they want on accountability now.
Furthermore, while Chairman John Kline and others are talking about whether ED has the authority to set up conditions for waivers that are not in the statute, I don't necessarily see clear-cut authority to issue wholesale Sec. 1111(AYP) and 1116 (school improvement) waivers in the first place, regardless of what conditions are met. Such waivers certainly weren't contemplated at the time the law was passed (not that folks today care much legislative intent).?Furthermore, NCLB waiver language actually requires States to set achievement goals in accordance with NCLB AYP requirements to even ask for a waiver?implying that Congress didn't want these essential elements waived. Additionally, the two authorities that were originally conceived to provide states with significant flexibility for Title I accountability, State Flex and Local Flex, lost their meaningful flexibility provisions in conference: those authorities do not allow states or districts to do anything to change Title I accountability.
-Christine Wolfe