How should the feds respond to Indiana’s waiver request?
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Every Student Succeeds Act
12 min read
The article centers on Indiana's ESSA waiver request and how federal accountability rules under this law might be modified. Understanding ESSA's history, provisions, and how it replaced No Child Left Behind provides essential context for the policy debate discussed.
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No Child Left Behind Act
12 min read
The article explicitly references No Child Left Behind when discussing accountability theory and comparing American education reform approaches to British reforms. Understanding this predecessor law illuminates why ESSA's flexibility provisions exist and the historical tensions in federal education accountability.
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Education in England
13 min read
The article discusses England's 'high accountability, high autonomy' approach and impressive gains since 2010 under reforms led by Sir Nick Gibb as a comparative model. Understanding the English education system provides valuable international context for the American accountability debate.
Happy holiday party season, education friends. Here’s your annual reminder that it’s OK to just say no to the invitations. Tell them you’re too busy reading SCHOOLED.
Today I ask how far the Trump administration should go in allowing flexibility under ESSA’s accountability rules. I also catch up on edu-opinions from Heather Hough, Natalie Wexler, Michael Horn, Chad Aldeman, Jared Cooney Horvath, Tim Daly, Idrees Kahloon, Colyn Ritter, and Aidan Schief. And Jared Polis says yes to Trump’s education tax credit initiative.
Sign up to receive this newsletter in your inbox on Tuesday and Friday mornings. SCHOOLED is free, but a few linked articles may be paywalled by other publications.
Whether or not you think the Trump administration’s effort to dismantle the Department of Ed is a nothing burger, surely we can all agree that Indiana’s ESSA waiver request is at least a something burger. The Hoosier State is the first to propose that Secretary Linda McMahon use her waiver authority to allow major changes to federal education policy related to accountability. (A separate issue is Indiana’s request for funding flexibility, which I will leave for another day, and which is somewhat akin to what Iowa has proposed, as well.)
Given its ed reform bona fides and the strong reputation of state superintendent Katie Jenner, the feds’ response could open the floodgates to imitators.
Back in August, a coalition of ed reform organizations urged Indiana to deep-six or fundamentally alter its waiver request, to no avail. (Those included All4Ed, Education Trust, National Parents Union, and UnidosUS, among others.) Now it’s up to Secretary McMahon and Assistant Secretary Kirsten Baesler to decide how to respond.
Personally, I think it’s naïve to expect Trump officials to reject the waiver proposal outright. They have been insistent (if not consistent) in their desire to return power to the states, and have welcomed waiver requests, so they will surely find a way to get to yes. The question, then, is what exactly they should assent to—and what pieces they should reject.
That’s where you come in. What would you recommend that McMahon and Baesler do? What parts of Indiana’s proposal can reformers live with? And where should bright lines be drawn?
How would Indiana’s new A–F accountability system work?
At the heart of Indiana’s waiver request is its new accountability system. To get up to speed, it’s worth
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