ESEA waivers: Are they worth the trouble?

This from Michael Petrilli at Fordham:

With a week to go until the [now] February 28 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...

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

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