Speedily running out of time, a delegation from nine California school districts will go to Washington this calendar week to make a concluding pitch to federal officials for a waiver from the No Kid Left Backside police.

Officials from the California Office to Reform Educational activity (Core), the umbrella organization that the nine districts created, remain optimistic that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will grant them a unique districtwide waiver from pregnant penalties and requirements nether NCLB. The immediate obstacle facing them, for the waiver to take consequence in the upcoming schoolhouse year, is fourth dimension. Districts are up confronting deadlines for contracts with companies that provide services, such as tutoring, in schools that have failed to come across NCLB's academic targets . Especially for Los Angeles Unified, a Cadre district, these must exist signed within a week or so, said Rick Miller, executive director of Core.

Fresno Unified Superintendent Michael Hanson is in the delegation traveling to Washington to make the case for a nine-district waiver.

Fresno Unified Superintendent Michael Hanson is in the delegation traveling to Washington to make the example for a 9-district waiver.

If the 3-yr waiver is approved, such contracts won't exist required. Instead, the 9 districts birthday will take flexibility to spend $100 million in Title I dollars funded for depression-income children. The districts plan to apply some of that money for teachers and administrators to work collaboratively. Sharing best practices amid districts is a key element of the CORE awarding and offers "admittedly the best chance for districts to improve," said Fresno Unified Superintendent Michael Hanson.

Along with Hanson and Miller, superintendents heading to Washington on Tuesday are John Deasy of Los Angeles Unified, Christopher Steinhauser of Long Beach Unified, Richard Carranza of San Francisco Unified and Gary Yee, interim superintendent of Oakland Unified. (Duncan won't be in town today; he's heading to Minneapolis.)

What'due south encouraging, Miller said, is that "we are still intently engaged in conversations" with senior staff at the Section of Educational activity.

Duncan has granted waivers to 39 states and Washington, D.C. (come across map), with applications for six more states even so nether review. V other states accept either not sought a waiver or, like California, take had applications rejected.

Core includes some of the state's largest unified districts – Los Angeles, Long Beach, Fresno, Sacramento City, San Francisco and Santa Ana – forth with Oakland, Sanger and Clovis. Together they represent about a million children, more students than in many other states. However, the federal government has never granted a NCLB waiver for districts, raising political and policy complications. The Council of Principal State School Officers, representing state superintendents, opposes the CORE waiver equally an intrusion on their authority to enforce federal and land policies, and some advocates for depression-income and minority students, including Washington-based The Education Trust, dislike the precedent of bypassing country oversight of academic accountability under NCLB. In March, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson and State Board of Education President Michael Kirst wrote Duncan noting the State Board'southward stiff support for the waiver. However, the letter also raised concerns that needed to be dealt with, similar the role of the state Department of Pedagogy.

Emphasis on district collaboration

Cadre argues that it will need broader accountability measures, across test scores, and make accessible to the public extensive information on academic results roofing many more students than the federal government is requiring for a waiver. Just it will exercise and so through a distinctly dissimilar approach, based on peer review and a "moral imperative," in which districts concord i another accountable. Those districts that don't measure up will forgo the waiver. Likewise losing Championship I spending flexibility, they volition accept to continue to notify parents that their schools face sanctions for failing to meet increasingly unrealistic federal measures of proficiency on standardized tests.

In its application, Cadre cited the loftier-performing Canadian province of Ontario, with its focus on teacher collaboration, instead of government-imposed sanctions, as its model. The builder of Ontario's reforms, author Michael Fullan, advised CORE with its wavier application and might serve every bit an adviser if information technology's approved.

To receive a waiver, states and the CORE districts would have to demonstrate how they would effectively innovate Common Cadre standards in English language arts and math and implement plans for improving their everyman performing 15 percent of schools. They must too commit to adopt new systems for evaluating teachers and administrators that would include results on standardized tests. In their application, the CORE districts said they would offer districts two options: 1 would require that exam results contain a minimum of 20 percentage of an evaluation; the other, based on a arrangement adopted in Massachusetts, would require using standardized tests only as a cheque against a review based on other factors, such as teacher observations and parent surveys.

The latter option should be an attractive culling for teachers who oppose using standardized test scores. But, frustrated that they weren't consulted in writing a Cadre application stressing collaboration with teachers, the presidents of the Cadre districts' teachers unions wrote Miller last calendar month maxim they opposed the waiver awarding. Whatever endeavour at "whole organisation reform" must include "educators and their representatives, as well equally other stakeholders, in meaningful decision-making roles throughout the process … non as an reconsideration."

Miller said that he understands why their application is giving the Department of Teaching pause. "There has been a positive touch on in Ontario, just vesting power in peer review has not been done at this level in the United States," he said. Federal officials "desire to understand better and want more clarity." They besides desire "a backstop" – a strong guarantee, in lieu of a formal role of the state, to ensure federal waiver and testing requirements will be enforced, he said.

Miller said that the waiver has gotten "enormous attention" from Duncan. Considering the "potent pushback" from forces lined upwards against a commune waiver, "it is boggling that he has been so engaged. The Secretary of Educational activity deserves a Profile in Backbone award," he said.

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