Dropout Nation

At least you can say this about House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline’s letter last week to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (along with chief state school officers) asking questions about the Obama Administration’s counterproductive effort to eviscerate the No Child Left Behind Act and its accountability provisions: At least he and Todd Rokita, the former Indiana Secretary of State who now chairs the committee’s sub-panel on elementary and secondary education, are finally demanding the administration to explain its process for granting the waivers, as well as describe what consequences states granted waivers will face if they don’t implement all their promised reforms. Sure the Obama Administration’s effort to eviscerate No Child is, in substance, no different that what Kline has attempted to do since becoming the committee’s chairman two years ago. But at least Kline is actually taking Congress’ oversight role seriously, something that his counterpart in the Senate, Tom Harkin, didn’t really when the federal upper house’s education committee brought Duncan in for questioning two months ago.

It is also good to see that Kline is asking the all-important question of what steps will the administration take if states granted waivers don’t — or struggle to — put their promised reforms in place. This is already an issue in New York State, where districts such as New York City cannot get American Federation of Teachers affiliates to agree to implementing the Empire State’s modest performance-based teacher evaluation system — and that at least one district that has put the evaluation system in place — the one in Buffalo — has a side deal with the AFT local there to not use evaluation data in firing decisions to the dismay of both Education Commissioner John King and Gov. Andrew Cuomo (who has called the action a “fraud”). Certainly the Obama administration can decide to withdraw waivers from any of those states if they don’t meet their promises. But that would require a level of discipline that the administration has yet to demonstrate in a meaningful way. And considering the sloppiness of the Obama administration’s handling of the waivers thus far, neither Kline nor his congressional colleagues can reasonably expect the administration to hold states accountable in any way — especially since it can be argued that the waiver gambit itself is legally questionable in the first place.

At the same time, Kline could have asked so many better questions that would reveal the myriad problems with the administration’s shoddy policymaking. Asking how many meetings were conducted before the granting or denial of each state waiver request, for example, doesn’t deal with the more-critical problem of the No Child waiver process: That states such as New Mexico and New York didn’t adequately consult with families, American Indian tribes and Alaska Native corporations (which are also tribes), or with civil rights groups as required by the process; this is particularly troublesome in the case of tribes because such meetings are required both by Article I, Section Eight of the U.S. Constitution and by U.S. Supreme Court rulings, as well as by treaties between states and tribes within their jurisdictions and the Obama Administration’s own executive order issued four years ago. The fact that the administration ignored the concerns raised by its own peer reviewers vetting the waivers, as well as paying no heed to its own policies and constitutional requirements under law is enough for Kline to launch an investigation into the entire waiver process and halt it altogether.

This fact should also lead Kline to ask a question that he (along with Rokita) don’t pose in the letter: Why does the Obama administration have peer review panels in place when it insists on ignoring their concerns and recommendations? As Dropout Nation has noted within the past year, those very review boards have raised significant concerns about many of the plans submitted by states. For example, with the District of Columbia’s waiver proposal, one panel was particularly concerned that its transition plan to embrace Common Core math and reading standards was not “realistic and of high quality”, and lacked a “high-quality plan” for ensuring that English Language Learners and special ed students could get strong, comprehensive, college[preparatory curricula. Yet the Department of Education granted waivers anyway. Based on these facts, along with other examples of sloppiness (including allowing states to inflate graduation rates — and ruining the efforts spurred by No Child to gain more-accurate data — by counting GEDs toward their calculations), one can easily argue that the administration’s process has no theory of action driving it other than the desire of Duncan and President Barack Obama to put their stamp on federal education policy.

Meanwhile the question asked by Kline and Rokita about whether the administration is using “desktop monitoring” or “on-site visits” to ensure that states are implementing their promised efforts comes off rather, well, as if neither congressman nor their respective staffs (who, of course, actually wrote the letter) have any real idea about how state-level reforms are actually put into place. Seriously, you don’t ask whether on-site visits are being utilized to ensure that districts are actually conducting evaluations using Value-Added analysis of objective student test score growth data. You ask does the administration know how many states have all their districts implementing such evaluation systems — which tells you how much ease or difficulty states are having in meeting their promises — and do the states have data systems in place that tie together student test score growth data with that on teacher performance (another signal as to whether states are on the ball when it comes to implementation).

Then there are two questions (along with one your editor noted earlier in this piece) that Kline should be asking that he isn’t. For example, he should ask Duncan and chief state school officers in states granted waivers what actions will they take to meet their obligations under their respective waivers if traditionalists and others oppose those efforts. This is important because, unlike No Child (which was federal law passed by Congress, and thus, gave reform-minded governors and legislators a tool to leverage in driving their overhauls), the waivers have a questionable legal status. It is also an issue because, like the Obama administration’s signature reform effort, Race to the Top, there is an (implied) emphasis on cooperation with AFT and National Education Association affiliates. Traditionalists know this. So do those conservative reformers who oppose the move by states to embrace Common Core standards. Given that states such as New York and New Mexico developed their proposals without consulting with Native groups and communities as required under the waiver process, there are others who may not be so willing to go along with state plans.

Another is how can a state help poor and minority kids get high-quality education when the elimination of AYP and subgroup accountability as the levers for holding districts and schools responsible have been replaced with new systems that render those kids invisible? Expecting Kline to ask that question is like expecting the Los Angeles Lakers to beat the San Antonio Spurs in this year’s NBA playoffs. But either Rokita or his fellow Hoosier, Luke Messer (who did admirable work as a state legislator on passing a number of school reform efforts) should ask that question, as should ranking Democrat George Miller, who helped craft No Child. This question needs to be asked because the new systems, as civil rights-based reformers and others have warned, make it harder for everyone in education to know how well children are being taught. The concern is especially acute given that states are also implementing Common Core reading and math standards that are geared toward providing all kids — including those from poor and minority backgrounds — college-preparatory curricula.

For example, A-to-F grading systems used in states such as Indiana and New Mexico may seem to work because it provides family simpler data on school performance, but is ineffective because the underlying formulas allow for schools and districts to hide how poorly they are educating black, Latino and Native kids. A school can hide its wide achievement gaps and still get an A grade if it meets the other categories in the formula. Meanwhile the tactic of putting all minority kids into super-subgroups ends up being a subterfuge because it hides the performance of kids from different backgrounds; a district can, say, do poorly in providing college preparatory curricula to Native Hawaiian children in its schools and still appear to do fine so long as the achievement gaps between groups don’t appear to be so wide. Especially for states implementing Common Core standards, the lack of common accountability alongside uniform curricula expectations may lead to the standards not being put into place properly.

At the very least, by posing those questions, Kline would be forcing the Obama Administration to explain why it has continued with a gambit that is hurting systemic reform efforts on the ground instead of working with Congress on a reauthorization of No Child. We know that Kline would only be asking those questions largely for his political gain (as well as that of congressional Republicans in the lower house aiming to gain more seats). But they are still questions worth asking on behalf our children.