Virginia set to request NCLB waiver

Virginia is requesting flexibility from some federal education requirements in order to create an accountability system that mirrors its own.

Education officials will finalize the state's request this week and submit it to the U.S. Department of Education, which will approve or deny it.

If granted, Virginia schools will no longer be tied to certain No Child Left Behind accountability standards that many educators have called flawed.

"Many of the reasons outlined for the request are the same reasons Henrico and other school divisions around the state are asking for waiver considerations from the state Standards of Learning tests," said Henrico County Superintendent Patrick J. Russo. "We believe the teachers in the classroom should have options, other than a one-time test, to determine the success of students.

"This makes sense for requirements at the federal level, and it stands to reason the same would apply at the state level."

The 10-year-old federal NCLB law, which has not been reauthorized by Congress, uses the Adequate Yearly Progress designation to measure student progress, with the goal of having all students — and all subgroups — pass state assessment tests for reading and math by 2014.

Virginia is one of 28 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico that have expressed the intent to submit waiver requests by Tuesday's deadline, the second one set by the U.S. Department of Education.

Earlier this month, 10 states that requested waivers last year were granted the flexibility they sought.

Despite the criticism often directed at NCLB, educators point out that the law has had positive effects by focusing more attention on accountability and shedding light on the achievement gap between minority and white students.

"It put some teeth into how we focus our efforts on different learning groups within the school population," said James H. McMillan, professor and chair of the Virginia Commonwealth University Foundations of Education Department.

A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Education said the department wants states to use their own approaches for three criteria: a continued focus on achievement gaps, a high bar for all students with college- and career-ready standards, and teacher/principal quality measures.

It also requires all states to incorporate student performance as part of the matrix used to evaluate teachers and principals, said Daren Briscoe, deputy press secretary for the U.S. Department of Education.

"States are taking this process very seriously (and) are really working hard to meet the bar that we've set," he said.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Patricia I. Wright called for an overhaul of the system last summer when AYP results showed that only 38 percent of Virginia schools met or exceeded benchmarks based on the 2010-11 Standards of Learning assessments, compared with 61 percent the previous year.

On the other hand, 96 percent of schools met state accountability benchmarks and were fully accredited based on the same assessment results.

Virginia's flexibility request reflects reform efforts the state has advanced and more closely aligns the existing state accountability system with federal requirements.

The state's application also eliminates the misidentification of schools as failing by discontinuing the 29 performance indicators for the AYP requirement.

"Nobody wants to be … branded as slipping in standards or not being as good while these percentages get to be very, very high," McMillan said. "If you have high standards — and I think Virginia does by and large — not everyone is going to make it."

State Standards of Accreditation proficiency targets in the four content areas — mathematics, English, science and history — will serve as the foundation for performance expectations.

Those targets are currently 70 percent pass rates for all grades and subjects, except third-grade history/social science (50 percent), third-grade science (50 percent) and English for grades three through five (75 percent).

For the 2012-13 school year, the targets will increase to 70 percent in all subjects except English, which remains 75 percent for elementary school students and increases to 75 percent for middle school and end-of-course assessments.

State officials don't believe the benchmarks are too low. In fact, they expect the number of schools meeting the math standard to decrease as the new math SOL test is phased in this year. The same is expected to happen next year with the reading benchmark when new English tests are used.

Kathleen Smith, director of the Office of School Improvement at the Virginia Department of Education, said language in the state's waiver application allows the department to make adjustments to the accountability benchmarks.

Virginia's application also eliminates school improvement labels but assigns school accreditation and identifies proficiency gaps that may exist for Virginia's lower-performing subgroups of students.

Under NCLB, schools report results based on seven subgroups — all students, blacks, whites, Hispanics, students with disabilities, economically disadvantaged students and English-language learners.

In reporting the "proficiency gap" among subgroups, the state is proposing to focus on three primary groups: Gap Group 1 (students with disabilities, English language learners and economically disadvantaged students); Gap Group 2 (African-American students not already included in Group 1); and Gap Group 3 (Hispanic students not already included in Group 1).

Smith said the subgroups unmask the achievement gaps for some subgroups that previously went unreported because of having too few students in that category.

She said to think of the subgroups as increasing from seven to 10, not going from seven to three. Proficiency gaps will be reported among the three new categories, not the original seven, although those still will be included on the school's report card.

"We can target more of our neediest schools with this system than we could in the past," she said. "We're now going to be able to capture those schools that have the biggest gap in their subgroups."

Educators have credited NCLB for exposing the achievement gap problem in schools. This year, Henrico schools launched a series of in-depth community meetings to discuss the gap between the county's white and black students.

"Our vision is to be the premier school division in the United States, and part of that means we want all our students achieving at high levels," Russo said. "We are building the leaders of tomorrow, and we must do all we can to make sure our educational system is fair and equitable to all, regardless of a student's race or family's economic standing."

Schools that are among the lowest 5 percent of Title I schools based on low proficiency in the all-students category or have graduation rates less than 60 percent may be designated as priority schools.

Schools that demonstrate a significant proficiency gap between the subgroup performance and the Standards of Accreditation targets in reading and/or math may be identified as focus schools.

Those that fail to reach the proficiency benchmarks for four straight years require that a lead turnaround partner is brought in to help direct school improvement.

The state can't take over a school, and a lead turnaround partner does not have the authority to hire or fire school personnel. However, if the outside partner makes "legitimate" recommendations to the local school board and they don't act on the recommendations, the state can withhold funding, Smith said.

Angela A. Ciolfi, legal director for JustChildren, a Legal Aid Justice Center program that advocates on behalf of low-income students, said the state should do more to strengthen its request.

If approved, she said, all but 4 percent (about 70) of Virginia schools "will receive the state's stamp of approval whether or not they have made any progress on closing achievement gaps."

Most schools will have incentives to divert resources from the lowest-performing students and direct them to the 70 or 75 percent of students most likely to pass, she said.

Though she lauded the state for revising its application to ensure the public reporting of proficiency gaps along with accreditation ratings, she said the "proficiency gap points" rating is just another statistic.

"Statistics do not change systems," she said. "The board should set ambitious but achievable annual targets for closing the achievement and graduation gaps."