A Spate of Education Waivers

Lately in Washington the big education news is the Obama administration’s announcement that it will grant waivers to relieve states from the requirements of No Child Left Behind (NCLB).  As the White House puts it, “states can request flexibility from specific NCLB mandates that are stifling reform” if they agree to implement “serious state-led efforts to close achievement gaps, promote rigorous accountability, and ensure that all students are on track to graduate college- and career-ready.” It’s too soon to know whether the waivers will prove a good policy (or political) move, but critics are already claiming that  the Department of Education doesn’t have authority to grant NCLB waivers.

Locally, another kind of waiver has been making waves in education circles. In June 2010, the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) adopted a system-wide teacher assessment tool – dubbed “IMPACT” – as part of a new contract with the Washington Teachers’ Union. IMPACT, which DCPS applied for the first time in the 2010–11 school year, assesses teachers based on classroom observations and students’ performance. The contract allows DCPS to lay off teachers based on IMPACT performance rather than seniority.

IMPACT is brand new, and in the first year of implementation – and the first round of layoffs based on IMPACT – DCPS decided to grant waivers to a number of teachers with low scores. Although the DCPS waivers won’t garner quite as much national attention as the Department of Education’s, IMPACT has attracted a great deal of notice outside the District. Putting IMPACT into place was arguably the major project of departed DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee, and critics and supporters alike agree that it’s a big step for the school system. But IMPACT proponents say that allowing waivers dilutes the evaluation tool’s effectiveness.

It’s difficult to speculate how labor disputes will shake out now that IMPACT is in place, although it seems likely that at least some teachers laid off due to low IMPACT scores – and who did not receive waivers – will pursue grievances. Just a few weeks ago, DCPS lost its appeal of an arbitrator’s award declaring that mass layoffs from 2010 violated the union contract.  The arbitrator found that  the school system didn’t give probationary teachers adequate opportunity to respond to administrator given to justify non-renewal — and ordered reinstatement of those teachers.  The 2010 layoffs predate IMPACT, of course, but it will be interesting to see whether post-IMPACT grievances raise similar questions.