No Child Left Behind Waiver for Minnesota Impacts Osseo School District

President Barack Obama announced Thursday that Minnesota would be one of 10 states to receive a reprieve from the federal education law No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

In exchange, Minnesota would have to outline new, “bold” reforms to improve teacher effectiveness, grade school accountability and close the achievement gap in social and ethnic categories.

“My administration is giving states the opportunity to set higher, more honest standards in exchange for more flexibility,” Obama stated through a White House issued press release Thursday. “If we’re serious about helping our children reach their potential, the best ideas aren’t going to come from Washington alone.”

Minnesota requested a waiver from NCLB last year, laying out a plan in its place to reduce the achievement gap found via assessment tests over the next six years.

The movement, led by Minnesota Department of Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius, uses four measures of school performance, utilizing current tools such as the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment tests, Adequate Yearly Progress measures, a year-over-year measurement of student growth, and school district graduation rates.

Through those four measurements, three school designations will be created.

• Schools scoring in the bottom 5 percent will be designated as “Priority Schools,” where the state will focus on developing and implementing a turnaround plan for that school, or school district.

• The next bottom 10 percent of schools, as measured by the state, will be tagged as “Focus Schools.” These schools will be asked to work with their respective school district and the Minnesota Department of Education to identify which subgroups are creating an achievement gap, and target an improvement plan to address specific needs.

• Schools in the top 15 percent will be identified as “Reward Schools.” These schools will be asked to share best practices with Minnesota Department of Education, and will be “publicly recognized” at the state level for their work.

The waiver and resulting changes in Minnesota will have two primary impacts in the Osseo School District, - a more “equitable” way to measure schools and students and the “capacity to repurpose sanctioned dollars, according to 279 Director of Research, Assessment and Accountability Don Pascoe.

“It redefines what it means to be a good school,” Pascoe said, stating there will now be a “more robust way” of collecting data and “more equitable way” to identify struggling schools. Under No Child Left Behind, elementary schools that made significant progress could still be labeled as not making adequate yearly progress (AYP), according to Pascoe. Those same schools might now have the opportunity to become reward schools.

Another key change for the Osseo School District will involve about half million dollars in Title 1 funds District 279 was required to set aside to address school and students not making AYP, according to Pascoe. Those funds were to be used to pay needs resulting school choice (such as transportation) and outside vendors to help instruct students.

“It’s a tremendous amount of money,” he said, indicating that it didn’t always show results. “The waiver allows us to stop those practices.”

Instead, the district can repurpose those dollars toward towards other programming, according to Pasco, such as extending Title 1 services to provide additional reading or math support, summer school support or preschool.

“They’re all options that could be on the table,” he said.

“Today we are one step closer to a system of accountability that puts students first,” Cassellius said in a press release Thursday. “Minnesota is a national leader in test scores, yet we are still faced with one of the widest achievement gaps in the country. Now, with the support of the U.S. Department of Education and Secretary Duncan, we will be able to better address those inequities and create an educational system that better serves every Minnesota student.”

The ten states approved for the waiver and reforms are: Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Tennessee.