Ahead of NCLB Waiver Guidance, Miller and Tri-Caucus Reissue Call to Protect Educational Equity, Civil Rights

WASHINGTON—In advance of the Department of Education’s release of guidance to states on what they must do to keep their No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waivers, senior Democratic lawmakers Monday called on the Department to protect the civil rights of children nationwide.

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), senior Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, and members of the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus sent a letter to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, asking the Department to ensure that states seeking a renewal of their wavers from some NCLB mandates remain accountable for the achievement of all students, including minority students, students with disabilities, low-income students, and English learners.

“While there are certainly provisions of No Child Left Behind that must be improved, the most important legacy of the law remains the requirement that every school be held accountable for the academic performance of all its students […] including for students of color, low-income students, students with disabilities, and English learners,” wrote the members of Congress. “Parents, regardless of their background, have a right to know, every year, if their children are learning at grade level and if they are not, that something is being done about it. We urge you to utilize the renewals process to ensure we do not retreat to a time when the achievement of our most underserved students and communities did not count and was masked. Our students deserve better.”

In 2012, the Department began granting waivers from specific provisions within the law in exchange for reforms to state education systems. Unfortunately, concerns have arisen with some of the existing waivers, and unless these issues are fully addressed through the renewal process, they will continue to undermine the federal government’s role in protecting and promoting equity in education.

The letter reiterates ongoing concerns that members have expressed about the waiver renewal process. In February of this year, Rep. Miller and members of the Tri-Caucus sent a similar letter to Sec. Duncan to call for the protection of civil rights in the waiver process. In January 2012, Rep. Miller joined Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, in a letter to Sec. Duncan outlining similar worries about many of the waivers’ accountability provisions. In September 2012, Miller also wrote to Sec. Duncan to convey concern that many states were trying to eschew certain graduation rate reporting regulations.

Read the full text of the letter below:

November 10, 2014

The Honorable Arne Duncan
Secretary of Education
U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue SW
Washington, DC  20202

Dear Secretary Duncan:

In the coming months, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) will begin considering state applications to renew waivers under ESEA flexibility. While we are confident that you share our commitment to improving educational outcomes for all students and closing the achievement gap, we remain concerned that information on the achievement and graduation rates of students of color, students with disabilities, low-income students, and English learners are not factoring into accountability decisions in a meaningful or actionable way under ESEA flexibility. Specifically, we request that all states be required to include clear and meaningful articulation of the role of student academic performance, including the performance and graduation rates of all student subgroups, in school identification and intervention decisions, as previously articulated in paragraph 10 of ED’s initial waiver renewal guidance released in August 2013.

While there are certainly provisions of No Child Left Behind that must be improved, the most important legacy of the law remains the requirement that every school be held accountable for the academic performance of all its students, both in aggregate and by student subgroup, and that every school release disaggregated data on student outcomes, including for students of color, low-income students, students with disabilities, and English learners. Since the announcement of ESEA flexibility in 2011, we have collectively written to you on a number of occasions to express our deep concerns with the lack of subgroup accountability for states in designing their accountability systems during the ESEA flexibility process. Regrettably, since that time, upon implementation of state systems, our concerns on this issue have been confirmed with data. Initial data reveal an alarming trend in States: the achievement of individual subgroups of students, especially in non-priority and non-focus schools, is often masked in the state-developed differentiated accountability systems approved by the Department through the ESEA flexibility process. 

Emerging data indicate that states are not including subgroup performance outside of priority and focus schools in their accountability systems in a meaningful way. A report released recently by the Education Trust tracked data from three states and found that the performance of individual subgroups of students are not being adequately captured in the accountability systems, resulting in schools receiving top ratings regardless of the low performance of some students within these schools, particularly students of color and low-income students. Put quite simply, when annual measurable objectives for student performance by subgroup play no part in identification of schools for reward or high-achieving status, vulnerable students are being left behind. What’s worse, in two states where the Education Trust looked at schools’ improvement from year to year, academic achievement for students of color actually declined in a significant minority of schools that received top ratings.  In addition, when looking at individual student growth over time, students of color in top-rated schools were much less likely to be on-track than their white peers. Another analysis by the Alliance for Excellent Education found 16 states and territories with ESEA flexibility that had little or no subgroup accountability for high school graduation rates, including states approved for flexibility with graduation rate accountability in possible violation of current regulation on calculation of graduation rates.

States now have been operating under ESEA flexibility for the last several years and possess existing data on the fidelity of school identification systems and whether schools with lagging academic achievement for vulnerable students, including but not limited to priority and focus schools, have improved during that time and how well individual subgroups of students within those schools have fared over time. This data, including student growth, subgroup performance and graduation rates, and the improvement of priority and focus schools should be made publically available and used in the ESEA flexibility renewal process to improve state systems, and ultimately to determine which states are approved for continued ESEA flexibility.

In addition, we share your commitment to equity in our education system and applaud you for the steps you have taken to ensure states work to distribute resources equitably among their schools.  In the waiver renewal process, states should continue to work to ensure that resources are distributed equitably among all schools in the state.  States should also make information about teacher and resource equity publicly available so that parents, teachers, school leaders, and other stakeholders can easily access this critical information.  

Finally, we urge you to make the ESEA flexibility renewal process as transparent as possible. Given the complexity of state accountability systems and the alterations that can take place over time, as well as the fact that renewals may grant States ESEA flexibility for up to four additional years, we request that you make all State requests for renewals, state accountability plans and modifications to those plans, and responses from your Department on these state plans, available on the Department’s website. 

As we have stated to you in the past, the Federal role in education has been one to promote equity and protect the civil rights of children. Parents, regardless of their background, have a right to know, every year, if their children are learning at grade level and if they are not, that something is being done about it. We urge you to utilize the renewals process to ensure we do not retreat to a time when the achievement of our most underserved students and communities did not count and was masked. Our students deserve better.

Sincerely,

• Print
• Email
• Tweet