James Q. Lynch, CR Gazette –
DES MOINES — The Iowa Department of Education Director Jason Glass has asked the U.S. Department of Education for a one-year freeze of a key federal requirement.
The request comes a week after officials at the U.S. Department of Education said Iowa could not receive a waiver from No Child Left Behind under its current teacher evaluation system.
Waivers require the state adopt a system in which teachers can be put into one of at least three categories: not effective, effective and highly effective.
An evaluation system was proposed in the 2012 legislative session’s reform package, but lawmakers opted, instead, to create a panel that would recommend an evaluation system to the Legislature for implementation at a later time. Glass said that the move put up a road block that prevented Iowa from getting a waiver this year.
But state Sen. Herman Quirmbach, D-Ames, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, said Glass and Gov. Terry Branstad were being disingenuous with the information they relayed to the U.S. Department of Education.
“Branstad and Education Director Glass need to do a much better job at communicating to the U.S. DoE that we have accomplished exactly what the feds have requested for the NCLB waiver,” Quirmbach said last week. “So far, they have fumbled the ball.”
The request made Wednesday, if approved, would allow the state’s schools to have about 20 percent of their students not meeting state standards and still be able to make what’s called adequate yearly progress.
If the request is not approved, school districts would have to have roughly 87 percent of their students meeting or exceeding state standards in order to avoid sanctions.
“We’re hopeful that through this new request we can temporarily halt the ratcheting up of unrealistic targets that are included in the blame-and-shame policies of No Child Left Behind,” Glass said in a news release announcing Wednesday’s request.
Department spokeswoman Staci Hupp said the department expects “a pretty short turnaround” from the U.S. Department of Education because specific adequate yearly progress targets are released in July.
