Special, Exceptional, and Gifted and Talented Education

The Alabama Department of Education has announced its intent to “delay” NCLB Choice Transfer (PCT) for students from poor performing schools.”  Alabama’s application comes on the heels of Duncan’s April invitation to Chief State School Officers to request administrative waivers of congressionally authorized Parental Choice Transfer for poor students to bail out of low performing schools receiving federal Title I money (reserved as supplemental “add-on,” academic assistance for schools with high levels of poverty among students attending these schools).

As the Bush administration drew to a close last year, the Alabama Department of Education announced its intent to “delay NCLB Choice Transfer of students from poor performing schools” for all of Alabama’s 132 school districts, serving over 700,000 students.  Seven other states requested, and received, clearance from Spellings to “delay NCLB Choice Transfers. Alabama’s pilot proposal, however, drew opposition from parents in Alabama and the Birmingham, Alabama-based school reform think tank and parental advocacy support organization, Citizens for Better Schools (CFBS), which filed written objections to Alabama’s proposal with Secretary Spellings. Spellings denied wholesale “waiver flexibility” to Alabama‘s request to “delay” Parental Choice Transfers to all 132 school districts.  Instead, Spellings allowed Alabama to implement a “Pilot” program delaying Parental Choice Transfer (PCT) to only seven Alabama school districts.

In United States Department of Education requested comments on Alabama’s NCLB PTC/SES flexibility waiver application, which includes request to “carry-over” unused Title I and professional development funds, Citizens for Better Schools asserted, as it did in 2008 with Secretary Spellings that

that Alabama has not established, by clear and compelling empirical data, justifiable facts or law to warrant the NCLB waivers it requests for Alabama’s entire school system.

Citizens for Better Schools Executive Director Ronald E. Jackson said,  “Alabama is the only sate in the nation I know of where the United States Department of Education had to order NCLB transfers to students trapped in Alabama’s under-performing schools.  Now, our state department of education wants a new Secretary of Education to reward them by further delaying the exit of students from poorly performing schools in Alabama.”  Jackson added, “It is seriously doubtful that the Secretary has the legal authority to grant Alabama these waivers in the face of the crystal clear grant by congress to parents to transfer their children out failing schools. State school officials have engaged in “interposition and nullification’ of NCLB from day-one and continue to do so.”  

John Brittain, former Chief Counsel of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, who assisted the CFBS said, Parental” Choice is a right extended by Congress to the beneficiaries of Title I and should not be taken away or delayed by the state recipients. What Congress giveth only Congress should take away.” 

Bill Taylor of the Washington-based Citizens Commission for Civil Rights, a nationally recognized civil rights and education expert instrumental in drafting the NCLB law said, “We are hopeful that the Secretary will not back away from the ‘bright line principle’ that every child should have equal educational opportunity and choice for a quality education in the United States. This is no time to back out the door on public school choice for poor children, leaving them without the same choice options afforded to children in affluent and middle class neighborhoods.” 

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Secretary Arne Duncan

APPENDIX

ALABAMA WAIVER REQUEST:

SCHOOL CHOICE SES WAIVER DRAFT - 7/17/2009
14 DAY NOTICE DRAFT - 7/17/2009
20 PERCENT SET ASIDE EXCULSION DRAFT - 7/17/2009
EXCLUDE 10 PERCENT PD LEA LEV ARRA DRAFT - 7/17/2009
EXCLUDE 10 PECENT PD SCHL LEV ARRA DRAFT - 7/17/2009
EXCLUDE ARRA SES PPA DRAFT - 7/17/2009
PROVISIONS TO GRANT LEA WAIVER DRAFT - 7/17/2009

ALA WAIVER SUMMARY of JOE MORTON:  

SUMMARY CITIZENS FOR BETTER SCHOOLS FLIP-WAIVER OBJECTIONS: