Indiana is now the third state, behind Iowa and Louisiana, to receive a waiver from federal law to relax restrictions on the spending of millions of dollars from the U.S. Department of Education.
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced the waiver Tuesday at a news conference with state officials at Plainfield High School, southwest of Indianapolis.
The state Department of Education submitted the waiver request in December, seeking flexibility from specific requirements of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Congress passed the measure in 1965 as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty.” State officials said flexibility would empower more innovation.
The federal agency approved the consolidation of about $50 million over the next four years into one pot of money.
The waiver merges separate funding streams covering assessments, teacher development, English language learners, student support and after-school programs into one block grant.
McMahon said Indiana’s strides in improving its accountability system and its waiver proposal move the federal government’s intent to return education to the states.
“Not only does this waiver provide greater flexibility for Indiana to serve its students the way it knows best, but it also helps to align education with the evolving needs of the workforce,” McMahon said.
Officials said the waiver will align state and federal high school accountability so the state will no longer have to maintain two separate accountability systems.
For years, the state maintained its own A-F accountability measurement alongside the required federal government’s accountability system.
Removing the federal government’s accountability system drew scrutiny from EdTrust, a nonprofit education equity advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.
EdTrust President and CEO Denise Forte said the U.S Department of Education “will allow Indiana to rewrite its accountability system in a way that will mask student performance and move millions of dollars in dedicated funding away from students who need it most.”
She criticized Indiana’s new A-F accountability system, which state education officials said is student-centered.
“In reality, it is a convoluted scoring system that appears to be designed to limit transparency and accountability and undermines its positive new assessment system, which provides more actionable data for teachers throughout the year,” she wrote in a statement.
State officials praised Indiana’s new diploma standards, which require work-based learning and the securing of a career pathway credential before graduation.
“In Indiana, education is built on choice,” said Gov. Mike Braun. “With this waiver, we are taking the next logical step for choice in Indiana education by giving our state more flexibility to use federal education dollars in the way that works best for Hoosier students,” he said.
Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner hailed the waiver as a vehicle to increase flexibility and reduce paperwork.
“Our waiver is focused on one simple goal—maximizing every federal dollar to make it better for students. By clearing unnecessary red tape and increasing our ability to deploy innovative solutions, we can empower local leaders to make decisions that best serve their communities, direct more resources into classrooms, and ultimately, expand opportunities for Hoosier students.”
But Forte said the waiver could lead schools to inflate student grades and performance because academic performance will no longer have greater weight than other measures.
“The bulk of a high school’s score, 80%, is based only on students who graduate, giving a school little incentive to support students at risk of not graduating,” Forte said.
She said Indiana’s waiver is less limited than Iowa’s.
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“Indiana’s waiver presents a much clearer danger, both to more than a million Hoosier students and the millions of students from other states whose leaders now know the Department of Education is ready to abandon accountability and civil rights laws in the name of ‘returning education to the states.’”
Critics also worried about the future of school improvement grants that typically went to struggling school districts, often in urban areas of low employment and poverty.
Indiana, however, did not receive a waiver for school improvement grant award funding, which is about $25 million.
If approved, Indiana’s waiver would have allowed the state to direct its $25 million away from traditional districts to charter schools or private schools.
Last year, the Gary Community School Corp. received an $800,000 federally funded Next Generation School Improvement Grant aimed at starting improvement initiatives at four low-performing elementary schools. If the district qualifies for Phase 2, it could receive $3 to $8 million.
The waiver provisions call for Indiana to report annually on how it spent the consolidated money and whether student achievement improved.
Carole Carlson is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.