US President Barack Obama released the State of Colorado from federal standardized testing and graduation requirements on Thursday after 10 years under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. The Colorado Department of Education (CDE) had been lobbying aggressively for a waiver from the overbearing federal requirements since November of last year, and will be freed from some of the constraints of NCLB largely due to a state-based accountability program laid out by the CDE in 2009.
Said Obama on Thursday from DC, “If we're serious about seeing our children reach their full potential, the best ideas aren't just going to come from here in Washington.”
The President announced late last year that each state would have an opportunity to break free from No Child Left Behind, but would then be obligated to follow similar guidelines at a local level. Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Tennessee all received similar waivers, with New Mexico’s application being rejected for lack of adequate state requirements.
Obama expressed disappointment with Congress for a failure to reauthorize No Child Left Behind after its initial funding period ended in 2007. Former President George Bush spearheaded NCLB in 2001 and quickly facilitated passage of the act, which overrode existing state requirements with a series of annual incremental obligations for federal standardized testing passage and graduation rates.
Bonus federal funding made the program initially moderately successful in some states. However, a failure to re-fund NCLB by the Bush Administration and every Congress since 2007 allowed the program to quickly devolve into a series of arbitrary federal requirements with the financial burden for enforcing mandatory guidelines left to states. By 2011 nearly half (48%) of all US schools did not make “adequate yearly progress” as outlined by No Child Left Behind.
Now Colorado will get to flex its education reform muscles and lead by example. Because the Centennial State already has its 2009 Educational Accountability Act in place, it will simply be a matter of stripping away unnecessary federal requirements and implementing existing local guidelines. Colorado schools will now have a single streamlined set of requirements to consider instead of working under federal and state rules that often contradicted.
“The waiver really supports our state system of continuous improvement and allows schools and districts to focus their energies on one accountability system designed to elevate student achievement,” said Colorado Education Commissioner Robert Hammond. “Colorado’s comprehensive state accountability system has gained the U.S. Department of Education’s quality seal of approval and has become a model for other states.”
Colorado will now have a chance to set the bar for state mandates on testing and graduation rate. The Colorado Department of Education will be able to dump the NCLB’s Adequate Yearly Progress requirements and start using state accountability guidelines in August of this year.
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