(This article has been updated.)

Nine California districts resubmitted their application Tuesday for a waiver from primal provisions and sanctions of the No Child Left Behind law afterwards spending weeks revising the application in response to dozens of questions past a console of reviewers from the U.S. Department of Education.

Screen Shot 2013-05-28 at 5.14.54 PMIf approved, the application by members of the umbrella organization California Office to Reform Teaching, or CORE, would be a first. Secretary of Pedagogy Arne Duncan has canonical waivers for 37 states with eight more states under review. This would be the only waiver granted to a group of districts, admitting one serving more a 1000000 students, and the arroyo, based on collaboration amid teachers and districts and an accountability system deemphasizing standardized test scores, would be distinct. The Core applicants include some of the state's largest unified districts – Los Angeles, Long Embankment, Fresno, San Francisco, Sacramento City and Santa Ana – along with Clovis, Sanger and Oakland.

Country Superintendent of Public Education Tom Torlakson appear last week that the state would not be submitting its request this twelvemonth, eliminating a potential disharmonize with Core – at least for next yr – and making information technology easier for Duncan, who had been criticized by state master pedagogy officers who are worried about the precedent of ceding state control to districts.

CORE officials expressed confidence that Duncan, who has final authority, will approve the waiver inside weeks, in time for information technology to take effect in the fall.

The CORE districts are proposing a different school accountability system. Standardized test scores, now the sole factor in current state API system, would now be one of three components. It would be included, along with the high school graduation rate, in the "academic domain," making up 60 percent of the index. Social/emotional learning factors and school climate measures each would comprise 20 percent.

The CORE districts are proposing a dissimilar school accountability system. Standardized test scores, now the sole factor in current state API system, would now be one of three components. It would be included, along with the high school graduation rate, in the "bookish domain," making up threescore per centum of the index. Social/emotional learning factors and school climate measures each would contain 20 per centum.

Stating the revised application is stronger and clearer, Cadre Executive Manager Rick Miller said Tuesday, "We are optimistic information technology will get approved. We've had regular calls with them (federal education officials), sharing drafts back and along, and have answered their questions. We're non confident this is the terminal draft, but are confident we will go approval this coming school twelvemonth."

Nether the awarding, whatsoever district or charter school in California that agreed to the conditions would also be eligible for a waiver, although Miller said he expects that most districts would accept trouble interim in time for this fall.

A waiver would offer several advantages: It would stop the clock on NCLB'south implausible requirement that every pupil be proficient in math and English language by next yr. It would costless upwardly for other uses more than $100 million in federal Title I coin that the districts' schools, under sanctions for not meeting academic targets, have had to use for after-schoolhouse tutoring and transporting students to other schools. And it would allow the districts create their own accountability system, based on a broader range of measures and information than NCLB currently demands, for raising student accomplishment and turning around the everyman performing schools.

Fresno Unified Superintendent Michael Hanson said the waiver offered an opportunity to "radically reorient" districts' accountability systems toward a "holistic" arroyo to student achievement and school improvement. The focus will shift from compliance and sanctions to "assist past peer educators, with shared responsibility" for improvement from teacher to teacher and school to school, he said.

In an 89-folio evaluation completed in April, the panel of vi federal reviewers requested more than data on about 60 aspects of the awarding. They wanted more details particularly in three critical areas:

  • How districts would practice annual instructor and master evaluations that include the "significant" use of examination scores to mensurate pupil academic growth, a waiver requirement:

This potentially presented the biggest obstruction, given resistance from teacher unions, which is a big cistron that deterred Torlakson and the State Lath from moving forrad this year with a statewide waiver. CORE's solution is to give districts ii options to choose from.

I was lifted from Massachusetts' waiver plan, which the federal government has canonical and which may take the biggest entreatment to districts in California. Results from standardized and other tests would non exist used directly as a metric in an evaluation but would serve every bit a check. If test scores and an evaluation based on classroom observations and other criteria didn't concur, the district would have a second look to place the discrepancy and could create a one-twelvemonth improvement plan for the teacher.

The 2nd option would require that state standardized tests results would comprise a minimum of 20 percent of a teacher or master evaluation, which, Miller said, should satisfy the definition of "significant." Since it would be implemented in 2015-16, information technology would comprise the new Common Core assessments, non the current state tests, the California Standards Tests. Core plans to create its ain method for determining how to measure pupil growth – a controversial and contentious upshot. Districts with their own models, like Los Angeles Unified, could seek blessing to employ their variations from the CORE lath of directors.

  • How, in the absence of state oversight, districts would account for student progress and fix schools needing improvement.

Cadre is proposing its own school accountability system, called a School Quality Improvement Index, which would differ significantly from the state'south electric current Academic Performance Index, or API, based well-nigh exclusively on results from the land tests. Only information technology would be closer in line with the new API that the State Section of Instruction and the State Board are developing, under a new state law that limits tests scores to 60 percent of the API. Cadre would include measurements of a schoolhouse's culture along with measures of social and emotional health of students, including factors like grit and determination that, Miller says, more fully reverberate whether students are progressing toward the primary goal of college and career readiness. No other state is attempting to incorporate non-cognitive factors in its accountability system, according to Miller, and the federal reviewers questioned whether their inclusion would water downward the academic measurements. As a result, Miller said that the application detailed the research showing the correlation between academic achievement and non-cognitive factors.

San Francisco Unified Superintendent Richard Carranza said work in his district has shown a correlation with early indicators of chronic absenteeism as a predictor of academic achievement, which educators have intuitively known. Codifying this factor into  an accountability system enables districts to get credit for effective interventions that they use, he said.

CORE's accountability index would break downwards as follows:

  1. Academics, threescore percent: Along with scores from required standardized tests, graduation rates and middle school persistence – the rate of 8th graders who proceed to 10th course.
  2. Social and emotional factors, 20 percent: Chronic absenteeism rates; suspension/expulsion rates with a focus on ending disparities amidst ethnic and racial groups, and as yet undefined not-cerebral factors that will exist tested next year.
  3. Schoolhouse civilization and climate factors, twenty percent: Results of student, staff and parent surveys, English language language redesignation rates, and rates of identifiying special didactics students.

Core said that it plans to collect and publish more information than NCLB now requires, such equally Advanced Placement test results and completion of A to Chiliad, the courses required to be eligible for admission to the University of California and California State University.

In addition, the CORE districts have decided to define 20 students equally a subgroup inside a school, compared with 100 students currently required under NCLB. Doing and so will bring an additional 200,000 students into subgroup reports – an indication of Cadre's "commitment to shining a bright light" on information with the goal of ending racial and indigenous disparities in achievement, Los Angeles Superintendent John Deasy said.

  • How CORE would ensure that other districts seeking a waiver would come across commitments under the waiver and, if they didn't, force them to render to the old system under NCLB.

Hanson said the merely requirements for access would be districts' commitment to share data and their expertise and their openness to use "the right drivers" for schoolhouse improvement. The application provides more than data on the process and timelines for applying for a waiver.

The federal reviewers frowned on ane of Cadre's ideas that challenged NCLB's key requirement: almanac state standardized tests in English language language arts and math for every student in grades 3 through 8, plus once in high schoolhouse. CORE had proposed tests for accountability purposes in only the last course of elementary and heart schools and in 11th grade. Cadre has now dropped the idea.

But the thrust of Core'due south proposal, challenging NCLB'south test-based approach to accountability, remains intact. School districts living under the demands of NCLB  "have as well ofttimes been chasing success in a organization that does not define success in a comprehensive or rigorous style," the application's executive summary states.

CORE officials and the application have cited the progress over the past decade of the Province of Ontario, Canada, as a model, and the work of the builder of Ontario's approach, author and education reformer Michael Fullan, as a guide. Fullan, who told EdSource Today he'd like to piece of work with the CORE districts, calls his process "motivational collaboration;" information technology relies on giving teachers a leading office in school improvement and an all-encompassing use of data, provided to the public.

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