Why Indiana is an imperfect test-case for state flexibility

On Tuesday, I asked how the feds should respond to Indiana’s waiver request under the Every Student Succeeds Act, and today we get answers from Nicholas Munyan-Penney, Brenda Dickhoner, Joshua Kumler, David Nitkin, and my new Fordham Institute colleague Brian Fitzpatrick. Then I round up the week’s best takes on ed reform, including Jonathan Chait and Vlad Kogan pushing back on pessimistic progressives, plus posts by Checker Finn, Nina Rees, Matt Barnum, Liz Cohen, Robert Pondiscio, Danyela Souza Egorov, Chad Aldeman, Robert VerBruggen, and John Kristof. And we say goodbye to a great American, Secretary of Education Rod Paige.

As I explained earlier this week, Indiana was the first (and so far, only) state to ask Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to waive some of ESSA’s accountability requirements. I asked y’all how McMahon and her colleagues should respond, understanding that a firm no was likely out of the question.

Several folks weighed in to explain why the question marks about Indiana’s still-under-development system are so problematic. Let’s start with Nicholas Munyan-Penney, who hammers home the concerns he and I discussed on Tuesday regarding how subgroups would factor into Indiana’s new system, as well as its squishy targets for high school students.

Saying no to everything certainly is an option—consider that the Department publicly pushed back against Oklahoma’s request and seemingly had an influence in Iowa substantially scaling back its original request. While certainly unlikely in the case of Indiana, McMahon could be willing to put some guardrails in place related to Indiana’s accountability system, particularly if pressured to do so by conservative voices with sway in Trump World.

There are two main guardrails that I’d recommend. First, the department must insist on clear information about how IDOE will identify schools for improvement, including based on student group performance. While we’ve heard anecdotally that identification will continue as normal, there’s nothing about this in the waiver proposal. This is essential to ensure schools can get access to resources and supports. Second, the department should require that scores for each indicator include the performance of all students, rather than the “choose your own adventure” menu approach Indiana is proposing (see Tuesday’s post for my concerns about this).

Alternatively, ED should be clear