Dear Commons Community,
Arne Duncan is pulling back on several of the deadline requirements of the new Common Core program. As reported in The Huffington Post:
“In what some see as a tacit recognition of the Obama administration’s overreach into nitty-gritty management of America’s schools, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will give states a reprieve from certain aspects of teacher evaluations’ consequences and the new wave of testing tied to the Common Core.
Duncan said Tuesday that he will allow the first two groups of states that received waivers from the No Child Left Behind Act to seek an extra year, until the academic year 2016-2017, before they give their teacher evaluations teeth by applying them to personnel decisions.
“Ensuring that educators are well prepared to implement those new standards is critically important,” Duncan said. “After listening to teachers and education leaders, we are providing additional flexibility to states.” He added that this will allow reforms to continue “on pace,” but that states will “have some flexibility” in when they start “using student growth data for high-stakes decisions.”
The announcement comes smack between the U.S. Senate and House hearings on clashing bills that would overhaul No Child Left Behind, replacing the current waiver system with a more coherent law. The debate between these dueling bills centers on the federal government’s role in America’s schools. No Child Left Behind dramatically increased that role, and now policymakers are trying to pull back — Republicans more than Democrats. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), a former U.S. education secretary who now serves as the Senate education committee’s ranking member, has taken to calling the administration a “national school board” because of its prescriptive role in managing schools.”
Sen. Alexander is right on this issue. The U.S. DOE has overreached its authority first with No Child Left Behind and then with Race to the Top programs that fostered one size fits all/do it this way or no funding policies that have usurped the authority of state education departments and local school boards. Considering that ninety percent of public school funding comes from state and local budgets, the federal government should not be dictating education policy. And given the dysfunction that exists in Washington, D.C., it is not a stretch to say that public education would be better served by policies formulated at the state and local levels.
Tony
