U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

U.S. Secretarial assistant of Education Arne Duncan says it'south not too late for California to pursue a NCLB waiver. Credit: Kathryn Baron, EdSource Today

California remains interested in receiving a waiver from sanctions nether the No Child Left Backside law, and U.Southward. Secretary of Instruction Arne Duncan said Wednesdayit remains possible for the state to get 1. But, Duncan said in an interview later an event in Sunnyvale, "Information technology's late in the game" to apply for a state waiver to have effect this autumn. (Go here for the transcript of the interview.)

Duncan wasn't more forthcoming virtually a deadline or the odds that the state would become a waiver, but he was clear about leaving the door open for California – ane of just a half-dozen states without an application either approved or pending in Washington.

Land officials have had standing discussions with their federal counterparts about requirements for a waiver, and Duncan said that he and Gov. Jerry Dark-brown had met to talk about it when Brown was in Washington ii months ago. Merely Karen Stapf Walters, an adviser to Brown and the executive director of the state Board of Education, said Wednesday that talks remained "at a conceptual level," and the country Department of Educational activity has not yet started to write an application. The issue of a waiver is not on the state Board'south bimonthly meeting side by side week.

The timing is tricky, and the issue is politically sensitive, because Duncan now has before him an awarding from nine California districts for a separate commune waiver. That awarding, through their nonprofit, the California Office to Reform Education, or CORE, has already undergone a formal federal review, and will be resubmitted, in response to extensive reviewers' questions, former in May, Rick Miller, executive director of CORE, said this week.

CORE submitted its awarding out of frustration after the state's awarding was denied in December and the state failed to resubmit another this spring. It's unclear what the touch on on Cadre's pending awarding would be if the state really submitted a competing application sometime in the next few weeks.

Responding to states' education chiefs who don't want their authority undermined, Duncan has said that he would only consider district applications in those states without waivers. Pressed on that point, Duncan told EdSource: "That's absolutely correct. So if the state came in with an application we approved, we'd exist working with the state, non with a pocket-size set of districts."

The state would have to move quickly, however. School districts would need to know at the latest by early July for a waiver to take effect this fall. Before that, the state Board would demand to give ten days notice for a special meeting to approve an awarding. In one case submitted, information technology would become through a review process that would take at least weeks, if not longer, depending on federal officials' concerns. And, of form, an application would accept time to write.

Duncan confers with Stanford University professor Linda Darling-Hammond in Sunnyvale on Wednesday after a panel discussion on the report of the Equity and Excellence Discussion. Darling-Hammiond was one of 27 commissioners. Photo by Kathryn Baron.

Duncan confers with Stanford Academy education professor Linda Darling-Hammond at Fremont Loftier Schoolhouse in Sunnyvale on Wednesday after a console discussion on the report of the Disinterestedness and Excellence Commission. Darling-Hammond was i of the 27 commissioners. Credit: Kathryn Baron, EdSource Today

A waiver from NCLB would requite districts flexibility in spending hundreds of millions of dollars in Title I money for low-income students, and information technology would suspend some of the sanctions for thousands of Title I schools, designated for Program Improvement, that failed to meet almanac academic targets. In exchange, the state would accept to agree to specify how it would improve the lowest-performing 15 percent of schools, and it would have to concur to require all districts to conduct teacher evaluations that include standardized examination scores equally a "significant" component.

Information technology was the latter requirement that Brown declined to agree to in the state'south first awarding, and it remains a indicate of contention. However, land Board of Education President Michael Kirst said that the state is examining waivers canonical for other states, particularly Oregon and Washington, to come across if California can define "significant" in style that will work.

Kirst said there are other difficult issues as well. California is in the process of revising its commune and school accountability arrangement to include factors other than test scores, and the Legislature may suspend some of the yearly tests taken past high school students and English learners, as Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson has proposed. The federal government may not concur with so much in flux, he said.

The Core districts are proposing a sharply different approach to accountability, with school improvement based on commune collaboration and peer review. Using the province of Ontario every bit a model, CORE also wants to skin dorsum annual loftier-stakes testing for every student in every grade – a cardinal principle of NCLB.

Assuming Core and the federal government can work through disagreements, ane choice would be to grant a commune waiver for a year, leading to a state waiver after that, based on lessons learned from CORE's experiment.

The nine Core districts include Los Angeles Unified, Long Beach, Fresno, San Francisco and Oakland, and represent a combined 1 meg California students.

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