ELC Protests our ESEA Waiver Application

NJ’s Education Law Center has just released a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan requesting that NJ’s application for a waiver from the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (or NCLB) be deferred. (Here’s our application and here’s some commentary.)

According to ELC, the NJ Department of Education failed to make the waiver application public and also failed to solicit adequate input from stakeholders per waiver conditions. From the letter, dated Dec. 22nd:
Instead on Nov. 3 the NJDOE released only a “draft outline” of the application that failed to contain most of the crucial details on the waiver proposals. The State provided only a brief five-day period, including a weekend and a state holiday, for public content.
ELC then sent a letter to Comm. Cerf requesting that he delay the submission of our waiver application til February. The DOE sent in the application anyway. In addition, ELC objects to the DOE’s failure to include some of the public comment that was received (including ELC’s: big oops, if true). The letter also criticizes our application’s lack of attention to “critical issues” like teacher evaluations, college and career-ready standards, and the needs of students with disability and English Language Learners. Other objections include a reallocation of Title I funds and the dependence of NJ’s waiver plans on yet-to-be-passed legislation, like the Opportunity Scholarship Act, tenure reform, and the closing of chronically failing schools.

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