Timing may help Texas win education tilt in D.C.
Leadership turnover in Washington may slow efforts to enforce teacher evaluations based on student tests.
The U.S. Department of Education has slapped Texas with a “high risk” label, the latest threatening overture in a showdown between the state and federal government over teacher performance evaluations.
While the fight could jeopardize billions of dollars in federal education funding for low-income students — and almost all the state’s more than 1,200 school districts could face the consequences of noncompliance with the No Child Left Behind Act — Texas may very well win this battle this time, some education policy experts say.
Leadership turnovers in Washington likely will slow any federal enforcement efforts. And Congress already has signaled that it is sensitive to national pushback over requiring principal and teacher evaluations to be based largely on the test performances of their students.
As a requirement to receiving waivers from certain provisions of No Child Left Behind, states must focus resources on improving their lowest-per-
forming schools. The waivers also call for evaluation and support systems that focus on improving teacher and principal effectiveness.
However, the federal agency has described the Lone Star State’s guidelines for the evaluations as having “serious problems,” in part because those guidelines will be optional.
Texas Education Commissioner Michael Williams has repeatedly said he is not changing his position on allowing local school districts to choose their own evaluation systems. Without a fix by January, Texas risks sanctions after the 2015-16 school year. For now, Texas is one of more than 40 states to receive waivers that allow them to continue receiving the federal funding without abiding by some requirements of the law.
Williams said the Texas Education Agency has worked with districts to develop new teacher and principal evaluation and support systems, with a statewide rollout starting next year. While he estimates 85 percent of districts statewide will use it, Williams said it will not be mandatory, as the choice should be left to local districts, not the federal government.
“I don’t think Texas is going to kowtow to a federal requirement that it doesn’t want to do,” said Sandy Kress, a senior adviser to former President George W. Bush on education and a key architect of No Child Left Behind.
With President Barack Obama having a little more than a year left in office, “I think Texas is making a bet,” Kress said. “I think they’re making a bet that the law will be reauthorized in a form that doesn’t allow the secretary (of education) to make this demand on states, or time will run out for this administration to do anything about it and the next president will not make this demand.”
No Child Left Behind is years overdue for a rewrite, and reauthorization of the law would do away with the waivers, said Stephanie Cawthon, an associate professor at the University of Texas and a national expert on issues related to standardized assessment and accountability reforms such as No Child Left Behind.
When the law gets reauthorized, Cawthon said, “we won’t have to be doing this.”
While Cawthon believes evaluating teacher effectiveness based on student performance may come up in any reauthorization, others think such requirements don’t have a future.
Both the House and the Senate this summer passed reauthorization bills — both of which would take the federal government out of legislating how teacher and principal evaluations are done. Congress will have to reconcile the differences between the Early Child Achieves Act, which handily passed the Senate, and the Student Success Act, which narrowly got through the House.
In the meantime, odds are slim that the federal agency will drop the hammer on Texas and withdraw its waiver and cut off funding to disadvantaged students, education policy watchers say. Even if it does, Texas could appeal, delaying a decision long enough for a new administration to take office or for the reauthorization of the law.
Education labor unions, including the American Federation of Teachers and the Association of Texas Professional Educators, are applauding Williams and calling for Congress to pass the reauthorization as soon as possible.
“We have to go from a testing and sanctioning process ... to one that is about supporting children and focusing on the whole school improvement,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.6 million-member American Federation of Teachers union. “We need fair and reliable evaluation systems, but on a homegrown, local level.”