Feds grant Virginia a waiver from NCLB

Virginia schools and school divisions will no longer have to meet No Child Left Behind (NCLB) benchmarks in reading and mathematics or the federal law’s mandate that all students, regardless of circumstance, achieve grade-level proficiency by 2014, as a result of United States Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s decision today to approve the Virginia Board of Education’s application for a waiver from certain provisions.

“Virginia schools and school divisions can now focus their energy and resources on implementing the state Board of Education’s rigorous new content standards and assessments without contending with outdated and often counter-productive federal requirements and rules,” Patricia I Wright, superintendent of public instruction, was quoted as saying in a press release.

Virginia “will continue to hold schools accountable for closing achievement gaps” but “won’t be subject to a system of increasingly unrealistic annual objectives.”

The waiver allows the state Board of Education to establish goals for increasing overall student achievement and the achievement of students in demographic subgroups. According to a VDOE press release, annual benchmarks will be set. The goal will be to reduce the failure rate in reading and mathematics by 50 percent — overall and of each student subgroup — within six years. NCLB, as passed by Congress in 2001, requires all students — regardless of circumstance, disability or current achievement level — to demonstrate grade-level proficiency in reading and mathematics by 2014.

In a statement, VDOE said it will continue to report annual school accreditation ratings in September. These will be based on overall achievement in English, mathematics, science and history and high school graduation and completion.

Statewide, schools and school divisions will no longer receive annual “Adequate Yearly Progress” or AYP ratings. Under the approved waiver, information on schools that meet or do not meet the new, annual federal benchmarks for narrowing proficiency gaps will be reported separately in August.

David Foster, president of the state board of education, was quoted in the press release as saying, “This new federal accountability model is more complicated than the Board of Education believes is necessary, but it is definitely a step in the right direction,” He added that he hopes Congress will revise NCLB and allow Virginia to attack achievement gaps within the the SOL program, without federal rules.

Many underperforming schools in Virginia are already subject to interventions due to state accountability provisions and state-established requirements for schools receiving federal school Improvement grant funds.

“The waiver allows school divisions to focus their Title I funds on measures and strategies that have been shown over time to be effective in raising student achievement,” Wright said.

However, all public schools will have to implement improvement plans to raise the achievement of student subgroups not meeting the annual benchmarks.

According to the waiver, Virginia school divisions must implement the performance and evaluation standards for teachers and principals approved last year by the Board of Education. The standards require that 40 percent of a teacher’s or principal’s evaluation be based on student academic progress, the press release noted.

School divisions unprepared to implement the new performance standards by the start of the 2012-13 school year must prepare a corrective action plan describing how the standards will be implemented by the beginning of 2013-14.