North Carolina’s waiver of some requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind law now expires in 2018-19 instead of this year.
The U.S. Department of Education announced Tuesday that North Carolina, Minnesota, Virginia, New Mexico and Kentucky each received a four-year extension to their No Child Left Behind flexibility waivers.
Those states were granted waivers through an expedited approval process.
The waivers free school systems from sanctions, such as offering academic coaching, they would otherwise face for not meeting annual progress goals prescribed in the law.
Waivers granted to states are set to expire at the end of the current school year. The department has granted waivers to 43 states, Washington and Puerto Rico.
No Child Left Behind, signed into law in 2001, reauthorized and revised the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
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Under that law, school systems and educators were not rewarded for doing well. Instead, the “only reward for success was that you weren’t labeled a failure,” U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Tuesday in a conference call with the media.
The law was scheduled for reauthorization in 2007, but that never happened. Reauthorizing the law remains a priority, Duncan said.
He also called for a law that would give teachers and principals the resources they need, invest in high-poverty school systems, expand access to preschool and provide resources and support to schools repeatedly failing to make progress, among other things.
“This law is, at its heart, a civil rights law and it must remain true to those ideals, those values,” Duncan said.
Duncan also noted the nation’s record high graduation rate and declining dropout rate, particularly for minority students.
“It would be a huge mistake to turn back the clock on that progress,” he said. The waivers are part of the effort to continue progressing, Duncan said.
The U.S. Senate is expected to take up reauthorizing the law on April 14. The proposed bill would get rid of Adquate Yearly Progress, a major component of No Child Left Behind. It also would reallocate funding from dozens of programs to a new “local academic flexible grant” that would allow school systems to decide how to spend the money. The bill also proposes changes to Title I funding for at-risk students — changes that some fear will mean less money for the poorest schools.
A law reauthorized by Congress would supersede the waivers.
Even with the waiver, funding will continue to be a challenge for local schools.
Some principals, teachers and parents are worried about having larger classes, fewer tutors and fewer academic supports if their schools lose Title I status or see a significant decrease in Title I funding.
“The waiver, unfortunately, does not help us with funding,” said Kelly Hales, executive director of state and federal programs for Guilford County Schools.
But Guilford, like other North Carolina school systems, is free of sanctions such as having to bus students to other schools in the district if their assigned school is labeled failing,
offering academic coaching or taking other corrective action.
“That means the district does not have to set aside funding for those sanctions,” Hales said.
