The waivers are a missed opportunity to encourage states to focus on strategies to improve learning outcomes for children from birth through third grade. Nothing in the waiver process prohibits a state from focusing on the early years and grades, and as my colleagues have written on our blog Early Ed Watch, some of the state’s efforts to improve standards, assessments, educator evaluation systems, and accountability systems do touch K-3. But much more should have been required in order to focus reform efforts on this crucial age group.

My colleague, Clare McCann, took a close look at states' applications that were submitted in the first waiver round, and found that only a couple of states specifically addressed early learning. New Jersey developed an “early warning system” that would identify students, first through twelfth grade, in need of academic interventions. And to support the implementation of the Common Core Standards, Tennessee is providing professional development for teachers in the early grades. These are important efforts, but states should do much more.

Since it could be at least another year, if not more, before Congress moves to reauthorize ESEA, these waivers may be the best opportunity to spur investment in and better alignment across pre-K and the early grades.

Ensuring that children get the right start – which begins before they enter kindergarten – helps put them on the track to reading by the end of third grade, which we know is an important indicator of academic success in the upper grades and of graduation from high school.

But if early childhood learning is not made a priority by the Department, it’s unlikely that states will include it in their waiver proposals.

There’s no doubt that NCLB’s effort to establish an academic floor for underperforming and economically disadvantaged students led to lower standards in many states. The law’s drafters couldn’t avoid that consequence because when NCLB was on the drawing board a decade ago we didn’t have the technical capacity to measure on a large scale schools’ impact on individual students’ achievement levels from year to year, a so-called value-added strategy that would have given schools credit for educating students regardless of where the students started the school year academically. By decreeing that schools had to set a single standard and have every student reach it, NCLB practically guaranteed that the standards would be set low, large numbers of schools would nonetheless underperform, and that there would be a political backlash against the law.

The Obama administration’s expectations of states that received NCLB waivers are useful levers of improvement, at least in theory: new, higher student achievement standards; tests that move beyond basic skills; more-rigorous evaluations of teachers and principals; steps to turnaround the lowest performing schools. It’s also encouraging that the waivers require states to reward high-performing schools, something that didn’t happen under NCLB.

But it’s not clear that the accountability strategy built into the administration’s waivers is going to work any better than NCLB’s. The new model, which also undergirds most of the ESEA reauthorization proposals currently languishing in the Congress, relies heavily on transparency: schools must test students as they did under NCLB and report the results publicly. But only the very worst schools are going to face real sanctions. So the only thing that’s going to push most schools to improve is the power of negative publicity. Time will tell whether that’s a strong-enough incentive.

Nor is it clear whether states are actually going to implement high standards and more rigorous tests. One step is key: removing the incentive to lower standards by shifting to accountability system that gauges schools growth regardless of where their students start on achievement spectrum. Value-added measures of teacher performance are spreading rapidly. We should be evaluating schools the same way.

I was encouraged by President Barack Obama’s announcement to waive problematic and burdensome regulatory requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) from ten states, but this is not enough. It is time for Congress to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary School Education Act (ESEA).

While, the NCLB waiver program will give ten states (and more states to come as applications are approved) additional flexibility, it also imposes new conditions and program criteria on states and school districts requiring them to engage in activities that do not necessarily improve student achievement.

The waiver process should not be viewed as an acceptable substitute for ESEA reauthorization, as all U.S. school districts must be free of unnecessary or counterproductive federal mandates that hinder our goals of increasing student achievement. Congress cannot continue to delay, now is the time to reauthorize ESEA and fully replace the current accountability system that neither accurately nor fairly reflects the performance of students, schools, or school districts.

If Congress waits until next year to reauthorize ESEA and decides not to include these conditions or decides on a different set of requirements, school districts could have spent unnecessary time and financial resources to comply with the waivers.

There’s no question that ESEA needs to be reauthorized, but until that happens, the U.S. Department of Education’s offer of flexibility has provided a significant opportunity for states to recast critical policies and develop cohesive plans for reform that can accelerate student achievement. Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia intend to apply for flexibility by the February 28th deadline. As these states work to finalize their proposals, we urge leaders to remember three key ideas: (1) Principals matter, (2) Alignment matters and (3) Implementation matters.

Principals matter. Research shows—and our experience confirms—that strong school leaders have a powerful multiplier effect, dramatically improving the quality of teaching and raising student achievement in a school. And teachers agree: in a survey of 40,000 teachers, 91% said that school leadership had a very important impact on achievement, and 96% said that supportive leadership was very important for keeping good teachers in their schools. In low-achieving schools, it’s possible to find a few classrooms that are proving high levels of achievement are possible everywhere. But to ensure strong teaching in classroom after classroom across an entire school, you need a great principal who can recruit, develop, support and retain effective teachers.

Simply put, we will not close the achievement gap and will not provide all our children with a high-quality education without great leadership. ESEA flexibility affirms this by requiring that principals, in addition to teachers, be considered as part of a broader educator effectiveness strategy that connects evaluations with professional development and support. Indeed, peer reviewers specifically asked Minnesota to address the “lack of statutory requirements around principal evaluations.”

Alignment matters. Designing these proposals takes a significant amount of work, but it is essential that as the response to each principle is developed it is part of a comprehensive and coherent system. To take just one example, principals need to know how the system defines their role and expects them to prioritize their time and attention. For this to be possible, the accountability measures of the school and the evaluation measures of the principal need to be aligned. The same is true for teachers and other instructional staff. Data from the evaluations then need to inform the professional development provided.

Implementation matters. While it’s important for the design to be strong from the start, as states draft their timelines, we urge state leaders to shift the balance of work toward implementation, with a strong focus on training and support for school system leaders, principals and teachers. It is equally important for states to build in mechanisms for continuous improvement and allow for refinements along the way.

Especially with tighter budgets, it is no small feat to design, develop, align and implement cogent reforms for children. But creativity can yield useful guidance in how to spend scarce dollars. For example, in correspondence with Kentucky, the Department noted that while a state may not direct Title II-A spending in districts, states may “insist on reviewing LEA-proposed uses of Title II-A funds to ensure that all LEA Title II-A–funded activities are based on review of the research and are expected to improve student achievement.”

At the end of the day, the success of this work will hinge on whether or not the new systems serve to improve classroom practice and increase student achievement—and for that to happen across a given school, principals must be a key component of the ESEA flexibility proposals. (For more information, see “Driving Alignment & Implementation: The Role of the Principalship in ESEA Flexibility”: www.newleaders.org/newsreports/publications/esea/)

President Obama’s state waiver approach is a necessary step to ensure that students are improving their learning while providing states and local school districts a realistic opportunity to help them do so.

The current law of the land, the ten-year old No Child Left Behind (NCLB), introduced some critical concepts to achieving positive student outcomes, but is too blunt and restrictive and inaccurately describes student progress. Until Congress, which enacted this law in a fully bipartisan manner, shows it can change it through a complete reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the U.S. Department of Education not only has the right, but also the responsibility to take action.

The waivers reflect important NCLB’s tenets: demanding that schools and school districts improve student outcomes and supporting academic achievement for low-income and minority students, English language learners and students with disabilities. Yet, by permitting state policy variations, waivers also recognize NCLB’s failed pieces: labeling schools failing when a vast majority of their students are succeeding; requiring certain remedies, but not allowing others; setting specific federal student proficiency goals without regard to state and local conditions; and omitting a student assessment growth measurement.

In contemplating future needs, the waivers respect state experiences with evidence-based reforms and take into account what research tells us about necessary adaptations to federal education policy. Namely, waivers recognize that there are positive interventions beyond the current NCLB forced consequences of supplemental education services and choice, such as meaningful teacher and principal evaluations, differential educator compensation, concurrent or dual enrollment, dropout reduction and re-engagement initiatives and student assessment growth. The waivers also acknowledge that states can have strong student goals, school interventions, standards and assessments, and strategies to close achievement gaps that vary from each other.

Like some other states, my state of Colorado has recently adopted a variety of such reforms over the past several years, even in the restrictive NCLB environment. Colorado is updating and modernizing its content K-12 standards and assessments; aligning them with preschool and higher education; accrediting schools and districts in a multi-tiered structure that takes into consideration student test scores and growth, graduation rates and closing achievement gaps; and incorporating student outcomes in educator evaluations.

My recently-introduced Growth to Excellence Act, offered in the Senate by Colorado’s Senators Mark Udall and Michael Bennet, would accomplish these accountability advancements. The STELLAR Act (Securing Teacher Excellence, Leadership, Learning and Results), introduced in both houses, would enhance educator effectiveness. Unless we see these types of provisions in an ESEA reauthorization proposal in both the House and Senate, waivers will continue to serve as an important relief for states and local school districts embarking on research-based reforms.

Last week’s introduction of partisan legislation in the House instead exemplifies Congressional inability to change the law. By not requiring states or districts to improve academic results, this Republican bill abandons the generally agreed-upon principle of insisting on student achievement progress. Indications are that such a partisan bill will not be considered by the Senate, which under Democratic leadership employed a bipartisan process. The House majority’s failure to do the same has very likely dimmed the prospect of a full ESEA reauthorization in this Congress and has made the administration’s waivers that much more essential.

President Obama’s waivers reward successful state innovations and in the absence of Congressional action are needed to move forward. Complete 100 percent student proficiency by the 2013-14 school year was a good goal, but now that it’s nearly upon us and we realize that for the time being this goal is not nearly feasible, a new path must be taken.

Here's a response from Mike Petrilli, the Fordham Institute's executive vice president:

With a week to go until the February 21 deadline for the second round of Secretary Duncan’s ESEA Waiverpalooza, states nationwide are studying the results of Round One to figure out what federal officials did—and didn’t—approve. And they are asking themselves a question: Is it even worth it? (A few states—including California and Pennsylvania have already decided: no.)

In the end, I suspect that most of the 28 states that have indicated an interest in a waiver will file for one, if only because, by this point, they’ve already sunk thousands of man-hours and tens of thousands of dollars into the process. And some of the flexibility provided by the feds to the first ten approved states is for real—getting rid of the “100 percent proficient by 2014” deadline; allowing all Title I schools to spend their dollars in a “schoolwide” manner; eliminating the ill-designed supplemental services program; ending the “highly qualified teachers” mandate.

But what about the accountability policies at the heart of No Child Left Behind? Just how much leeway did the Administration actually provide? Let’s consider three big problems with current law, and whether the waiver process fixed them.

Problem #1: A vision of “improvement” that looks at how this year’s cohort compares to last year’s, rather than individual student growth over time.

A few leading states—I’m thinking of Colorado especially—have leapfrogged several generations by focusing on the performance trajectories of individual students, rather than looking at different cohorts of kids over time. In the Colorado system, the goal is for schools to put their students on a course to be college and career ready by the end of high school. That creates strong incentives for schools to accelerate the progress of kids who are far behind, while paying attention to kids at the middle and top of the performance spectrum, too. This makes perfect sense, right?

Not according to the bean counters on Maryland Avenue. They insisted that Colorado add to its system of annual targets for getting a certain number of students to “proficiency”—with the expectation that an increasing number of kids would reach that target every year.

But that’s Accountability 1.0 thinking. Why do we care about how this year’s fourth graders perform versus last year’s fourth graders? Or whether more fourth graders reached “proficient”? What matters is whether kids are on track for college and career readiness—and whether students make enough progress over the school year to get them onto this trajectory. At least in the Colorado case, the feds have taken an elegant and rational system and made it more complicated and convoluted.

Problem #2: A race-based system of school accountability.

No Child Left Behind played a critical role in exposing the achievement gaps that plague so many of our schools. Continuing to demand transparency around subgroup performance makes eminent sense. But requiring that accountability systems be explicitly race-based is problematic, especially as the conception of “race” continues to change and an increasing number of students view themselves as multiracial. Furthermore, policies that encourage schools to literally “narrow the gap” enshrine in public policy the notion that we are rooting for white, Asian, and affluent students to do worse, or at least do no better. This is nuts. Yet if anything, the waiver process has exacerbated this problem.

Back to Colorado. Its focus on individual performance mitigates the need for subgroups because it creates strong incentives for schools to focus on their lowest achievers, many of whom belong to one or more of the various subgroups. (These kids generally have to make a LOT of progress to be on track for college and career readiness.) But that wasn’t enough for the Department; Uncle Sam wanted subgroup accountability, too.

Or consider Florida. Its longstanding accountability system includes a weight for the growth of a school’s lowest performing quartile. This excellent provision is another way to pressure schools to pay attention to their educationally neediest kids. So how did this system fare with federal officials? Not well. The same bean-counters (or peer reviewers, or both, it’s hard to be sure) demanded that Florida promise to intervene in schools that get positive school ratings – A’s and B’s even – if one or more of their subgroups isn’t up to par. But they can only get A’s or B’s if their low performing students are making strong progress. Bottom line: Florida got overruled.

Problem #3: Labeling everyone a failure means nobody’s a failure.

Probably the biggest complaint about No Child Left Behind was that it over-identified schools and districts as failing, meaning that the very worst institutions—the full-blown dropout factories—got lost in the mix. So one goal of the waiver process is to bring the number of failing schools down to a more realistic number, right?

Then try to explain the feds’ reaction to Tennessee’s proposal. In its explanation of the changes that Tennessee made to its original proposal, the Department of Education boasted that “based on data from the 2010-2011 school year, 105 of 135 districts would be identified.” And this is a good thing?

The feds also bragged that Minnesota agreed (under pressure, one assumes) to drop the “safe harbor” provision from its accountability system—meaning schools that have low proficiency rates but are making great progress will no longer escape the “failing schools” label. What’s the point of that?

So again, is “flexibility” worth it? For states hoping to adopt next-generation accountability systems—those that move beyond the poor design choices of No Child Left Behind—the answer appears to be no. But hey, getting rid of the highly qualified teachers mandate is nice.

--Mike Petrilli

The Obama administration’s big NCLB "waiver" announcement got the predictable, fawning edu-coverage. I’m not sold. Now, let's stipulate that President Obama and the folks at the Department of Education are good people who want to help kids. That still doesn't excuse an exercise that struck me as hypocritical and troubling.

First, setting aside my reservations about Sec. Duncan's right to not merely grant waivers but to impose wholly new requirements that exist nowhere in federal law, I was struck by the sheer scope of conditions that he cheerfully imposed. According to the White House release, these requirements included: "States must adopt and have a plan to implement college and career-ready standards. They must also create comprehensive systems of teacher and principal development, evaluation and support that include factors beyond test scores, such as principal observation, peer review, student work, or parent and student feedback...they must set new performance targets for improving student achievement and closing achievement gaps. They also must have accountability systems that recognize and reward high-performing schools and those that are making significant gains."

Maybe it's just me, but I have trouble reconciling this list with the President's proclamation that, "We want high standards, and we'll give you flexibility in return...Because what might work in Minnesota may not work in Kentucky." Indeed, one only had to read Duncan's complicated, jargon-laden, finger-waving approval letters to see just how prescriptive the process is. In fact, I don't think the extent of the new demands--and the limited flexibility granted--will be clear for weeks, at best. It's going to require patient observers to wade through the requests, letters, conditions, and so on.

Just for starters, it would appear that the waiver "winners" just promised to adopt narrow, prescriptive teacher evaluation and school improvement policies that apply to charter schools as well as district schools--but not even charter authorities are entirely clear on how this will play out in reality or if these commitments should be taken any more seriously than so many empty promises in the Race to the Top applications.

For what it’s worth, I was really struck by the "Stockholm Syndrome"-ness of it all. Watching governors and state chiefs hustling to comply with a wish-list of administration demands, out of desperation to escape the more destructive elements of NCLB, doesn't strike me as good for democratic government or school improvement. And I thought the celebratory press releases that the “winning” states issued would've felt more authentic if they'd been read into a camera and recorded on grainy videotape. I couldn't help flashing on those old Soviet show trials when the White House’s choreographed waiver event opened with the President declaring, "I want to start by thanking all the chief state school officers who have made the trip from all over the country. Why don't you all stand up just so we can see you all, right here."

Last week’s waiver announcement shows that federal policy can indeed foster education reform. And it highlights that states can serve as laboratories of innovation. The challenge, however, is for states and the feds to ensure that change results in better outcomes for students, and not just relief for adults.

Twenty-eight states, DC, and Puerto Rico intend to apply for a second-round waiver later this month. Combined with the eleven first-round applicants, that means 39 states have responded positively to the invitation to improve their education systems. This is a good sign that states recognize and respond to the federal role in education, contrary to those who would dramatically reduce or eliminate it.

States should take notice, though, that receiving a waiver is not guaranteed, nor is it an easy pass from upholding current law. One state was not approved, three states were granted conditional waivers, and every state was asked to engage in significant revisions before receiving final approval. Third party organizations, like mine, have kept a close eye on state plans, raising concerns and promising to serve as a watchdog to the process.

The Department of Education must be vigilant in oversight to ensure that states carry out the ambitious plans they have offered, especially in holding schools accountable for getting results with all students. And states must keep their word to use waivers to innovative and reform, not simply get out from underneath No Child Left Behind. As with any policy, faithful implementation will determine whether or not plans become reality, and innovation turns into concrete improvement.

NCLB has certainly wounded many schools by turning them into stressed-out, data-driven testing centers. (For details, see NCLB’s Lost Decade for Educational Progress, here.) The administration’s waiver program, however, is more like salt in the wound than a band-aid. The waivers don’t free states from NCLB’s damaging testing mandates or support them in efforts to identify and remedy their real school problems (often driven by extreme resource poverty both within and outside school walls). Instead, they require states to enact costly policies that will only ratchet up pressure on teachers to do the wrong things in their classrooms for the sake of their jobs. As with NCLB, or perhaps more so, the damaging impacts will fall most severely on the poor.

President Obama and Secretary Arne Duncan have acknowledged how NCLB has driven bad educational practices. Duncan has called the law a “train wreck,” and Obama said waivers were necessary because NCLB was “driving the wrong behaviors, from teaching to the test to federally determined, one-size-fits-all interventions.”

Many teachers, parents and students had hoped this recognition would lead to real relief from NCLB’s damaging testing fixation. To their frustration and disappointment, the administration decided to do the opposite and attach strings to the waivers that only increase the importance of testing in our nation’s classrooms.

Their “band-aid” solution to Congress’s failure to reform the disastrous law makes a bad situation worse. To get waivers, states have had to adopt new standards and agree to link teacher evaluations to student test results. This is not an incremental step toward improvement, but an intensification of current problems. Diane Ravitch correctly summed up the likely effects of the waiver requirements: “Test scores will matter even more in the states with waivers than in the states oppressed by NCLB’s heavy-handed regulations.” Some band-aid.

The waivers have been presented as encouraging states to focus attention on the most “underperforming schools” rather than brand nearly all schools as failures. This, in theory, could be a good thing if the focus allowed states to target resources where they are most needed and led to real help for schools’ particular problems. But Stan Karp, of the Education Law Center in New Jersey, expressed doubts that the waivers will benefit poor kids. “There has been no real attention to the cost of these proposals, and the plans we do know about mean more testing for students and more intervention from Trenton. There is no flexibility from testing every child.” He said the reforms proposed will put tremendous pressure on the most vulnerable schools at a time when the state seems to be moving away from providing funding for those schools. “It’s a blank check to experiment on poor kids,” Karp said.

Some have said, falsely, that we don’t really know how to turn around struggling schools. Finland demonstrated how to do so by investing in training and supporting teachers and equalizing school resources across the board. Pasi Sahlberg, director of the Finnish Ministry of Education's Center for International Mobility, told The Atlantic, “Finland's dream was that we want to have a good public education for every child regardless of where they go to school or what kind of families they come from, and many even in Finland said it couldn't be done.” But they were wrong.

NCLB’s destructive impact is now well known, so it’s understandable that some have reacted hopefully to the idea of being freed from its strictures. As it becomes clear that, in their devilish details, the waivers don’t really deliver on the promised freedom, Americans will need to speak clearly and loudly and demand real relief and reforms to our federal education legislation.