NCLB Waiver Request Continues Failure Trap

Superintendent White's request for a waiver of the US Dept. of Education mandates of the No Child Left Behind law has serious basic flaws. Even so, such flaws will probably have no affect on its approval by Arne Duncan.  Since Duncan campaigned for White to be appointed, he will obviously approve anything White submits. The proposal amounts to a guaranteed failure trap for Louisiana public schools. The 120 page document linked here will institute major changes in Louisiana education policy.

The most basic flaw in the Louisiana waiver application is that it would keep the original requirement of bringing all students and all schools up to "proficiency" in ELA and math by the year 2014. (see page 59 & 60 of the application) This is the exact same false assumption about education attainment that has caused the collapse of the NCLB structure! To put it simply, you cannot force all students to perform at average or above levels. There will always be a distribution of students above and below grade level. All educators can reasonably do is improve overall performance. This is the crazy mandate that is forcing the need for the waivers in the first place! This so called "bold goal" of total proficiency for all is either dishonest or evidence of a staggering ignorance about the facts on the ground by our new state superintendent. (The application waiver form requires ambitious but achievable goals)White claims in his proposal that the state will require the continued acceleration of  school performance scores as we approach 2014. He apparently believes that the new value added system will somehow magically cause every single low performing student to move up to grade level.  All the state's low performing schools will be mandated to produce proficiency for all students in a little over two years. Boy is he in for a big shock! Just take a look at the chart on student performance history he included with his waiver application (on page 56). Notice how the slope flattens out in the last two years. White and his staff may need some remedial work in math and data analysis if they think this curve will tilt upward dramatically in two years.

The only thing I can figure is that White believes his scheme for giving extra points to schools for accelerated growth will somehow correct or compensate for the overall lack of student performance. White has not yet disclosed the formula he will use for the bonus point system. Or Maybe White and Duncan believe that it is a good idea to set unreasonable goals for student achievement because this allows these non-educator "leaders" to keep the real educators under constant pressure of failure.

White proposes that the creation of a new super subgroup of low performers will allow local systems to provide better services to boost their performance. That may be a helpful idea but the projection for progress is unrealistic.

Another major concern, is that White proposes to eliminate student attendance and dropouts in grades K though 8 as a factor in awarding SPS points. There was already too little emphasis on factors that reflect parent responsibility. This change totally removes all parent responsibility factors. We are creating a system where parents are led to believe that they have no responsibility to produce responsible behavior in students. Everything is now the responsibility of educators. This poisonous attitude will only cause a further deterioration of parental support and assistance in education. In addition, the change may encourage more dropouts before 9th grade. I believe there are already a large number of dropouts that are being improperly recorded as transfers.

The waiver proposal drastically changes the SPS system for high schools. 50% of the SPS would be determined by the graduation rate, and 50% would be determined by the average ACT score for all students. This removes the end of course testing as a factor in determining SPS. All students would be required to take the ACT. Any school with an average ACT score less than 18 would get zero points for this component. (see page 52) This means that White believes that our high schools should be converted totally into college prep institutions. It totally neglects the need for good vocational-technical programs and for career prep. One lesson White as a non-educator has not yet learned: forcing all students to take college prep is counterproductive. All this does is water down the rigor of true college prep courses while depriving the majority of students of career training of any kind. It winds up hurting all students.

This ESEA waiver is pretty important. It completely changes the focus of our school systems with minimal input from the real educators. It will be submitted to the feds before the end of February without so much as a vote of BESE. BESE has become irrelevant.