October 17, 2011

President Obama’s released a waiver plan for No Child Left Behind on September 23 that closely tracks the priorities and proposals of The U.S. Conference of Mayors. The President announced that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan would waive “reform'stifling” provisions of No Child Left Behind in exchange for serious action to close achievement gaps, promote rigorous accountability, and ensure that all students are on track to graduate college- and career-ready.

“Mayors strongly support the President’s waiver plan,” said West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon, “because it fixes the worst problems with NCLB without shying away from the smart, systemic reforms needed to assure that every student graduates ready for college and career.”

The Conference of Mayors adopted a comprehensive policy statement at the 79th Annual Conference of Mayors in Baltimore encouraging the Secretary to exercise his waiver authority to accelerate and deepen education reforms, pending Congressional action to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Cabaldon noted that, “Secretary Duncan has been a close partner of the Conference of Mayors, and the leadership of the U.S. Department of Education has worked collaboratively with mayors on development of ESEA priorities and the waiver plan.”

Key mayoral priorities incorporated by the Obama Administration into the criteria for NCLB waivers include:

• Replacing the system of labeling nearly half of all schools as failures, and instead implementing a more strategic accountability approach that focuses meaningful interventions at the worst schools.

• Setting a national expectation that every student should graduate from high school ready for college and career, regardless of income, race, ethnic or language background, or disability status.

• Using a new generation of assessments aligned with higher standards, capturing higher-order skills and deeper learning, to provide more accurate measures of student growth, align secondary and postsecondary education, hold districts and states accountable for college and career readiness, and better inform classroom instruction.

• Ensuring a more complete, well-rounded education for students to contribute in our democracy and thrive in a global economy.

• Supporting efforts to recruit, place, reward, retain, and promote effective teachers and principals.

• Enhancing the profession of teaching by recognizing, encouraging, and rewarding excellence, including more robust and systemic teacher and principal evaluation based in part on student outcomes.

• Improving access to effective teachers and principals for students in high-poverty, high-minority schools.

• Promoting greater innovation by local schools, with greater flexibility, and meaningful accountability for results.

• Taking steps to ensure equity, including comparability in resources and educational opportunities between high- and low-poverty schools.

• Continuing the incentives for systemic reforms first promulgated in Race to the Top.

• Streamlining funding streams to promote student success and innovation, and to provide greater flexibility to successful local schools, while continuing to ensure targeting of funds to high-poverty school districts and for services to students with special needs, including English Language Learners, students with disabilities, and migrant, foster care, and homeless students.

State education agencies will be able to apply for the new waivers in two rounds, one in October and another at the beginning of 2012. “While the response among most state leaders has been positive, we will be urging the Secretary to allow mayors and local districts to apply directly in an upcoming round in those states which drag their feet,” said Cabaldon. “Because America’s global competitiveness cannot afford a two-speed education system where a child gets left behind simply because their zip code is in a state which isn’t up to the challenge, mayors across the country will step up.”