Robbinsdale School District Responds To NCLB Leave

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 MDE to identify which subgroups are creating an achievement gap, and target an improvement plan to address specific needs.

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

According to Robbinsdale Schools officials, "one of the good things about this decision will be the ability of districts and schools to use multiple measures of data, including growth data in their reporting. Growth data is a much more accurate measure of success, because, basically, you're now comparing apples and apples rather than apples and oranges."

According to the Robbinsdale School District, "the entire process was a very important one. It gave the state of Minnesota the opportunity to create a plan for its students that is tailored to the needs of the students in the state, and to provide input into how that plan would be implemented. It's the exact same as giving students in a classroom a voice on how they will be able to demonstrate their learning."

The of last year.  

Obama granted the federal waivers after “waiting too long for reform,” he said. The administration requested rewrites to the national act back in 2010.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan said the current NCLB law, as written, causes narrowing of curriculum.

According to Robbinsdale School District 281 administration, "the districts in our state will still have to meet very rigorous outcomes. Commissioner Casselius balanced well the federal requirements with the needs of the state and local districts. Our teachers will continue to align their curriculum to state standards."

The state will have to do a lot of work to inform people that the waiver doesn’t take Minnesota schools away for measuring improvement.

District administrators believed the yearly reporting system under NCLB was comparing one group of students one year to a different group of students the next year.

Most schools in the Robbinsdale School District did not make Annual Yearly Progress, which was a big part of meeting NCLB standards.

"That's just not an accurate picture of the real learning going on, so it wasn’t really showing the progress that schools and districts made from year to year," said 281 administrators.

But just because AYP and NCLB may not be in Minnesota schools' future, it doesn't mean things should slide.

The Robbinsdale School District administration and staff understand this. According to the district, "Minnesota has, and will continue to have, rigorous standards in place. Our districts will still be required to assess our students. And our curriculum will still be aligned to state and national standards. None of that will, or should, change."