Loss of federal waiver will have local impact
CBH Herald School News
MOSES LAKE - State education officials announced last week that the federal government rescinded the state's waiver from the No Child Left Behind Act. What that will mean is still a little uncertain, according to local school officials.
One thing it will mean is that all school districts in the state will be required to return to the "average yearly progress," or AYP, standard when measuring achievement test results, Moses Lake superintendent Michelle Price said. That will require 100 percent of the students in each school to meet the standard for the district to make average yearly progress, she said.
That includes all students in state public schools, special education and second language learners as well, according to the OSPI website.
(That's because the AYP measurement mandated 100 percent of students hitting the benchmarks by 2014, the OSPI website said.) "I don't think we know all the details," Quincy superintendent Burton Dickerson said. The waiver gave school districts more latitude in how they spent money awarded through the Title I program, Dickerson said. (Title I is a federal program designed to help kids who are having trouble learning, the OSPI website said.)
Ephrata School District officials said they wouldn't know what the impact would be until later this week.
If a school doesn't hit the AYP benchmark, they are required to set aside part of their Title I money to pay for alternatives to the existing programs, Price said. That includes after school programs, summer programs, teacher training, and to pay for private programs to provide supplemental instruction.
"For us as a district, that's about $351,000 that we have to set aside," Price said. "We're going to be sitting on money we can't use."
Dickerson estimated Quincy would have to set aside about $180,000, out of $800,000 to $900,000. Othello School District superintendent George Juarez said the district would have to set aside about $240,000. "It will have an impact on what (services) we provide," Juarez said.
School districts can use the money in the 2015-16 school year, Price said.
The waiver was rescinded after the Washington Legislature declined to change state law to require that at least 1 percent of a teacher's evaluation be linked to assessment test scores. Price said the current evaluation system does include student growth data in the criteria, but not test scores specifically.
In Moses Lake, district officials already were taking the possibility of losing the waiver into account, Price said. "We have been planning for the 2014-15 school year assuming this was coming," she said.
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