Dive Brief:
- Indiana schools risk losing its No Child Left Behind waiver according to Assistant Education Secretary Deborah Delisle, who penned a letter to the state Superintendent Glenda Ritz indicating the state was being monitored for failure to complete promises made in its waiver agreement.
- The specific areas where the state delineated from its promises were with teacher and principal evaluations, the monitoring of the state's standards, and giving technical support to individual districts.
- The letter from Delisle says Indiana will be granted a temporary waiver, but that failing to fix these issues would result in the waiver being revoked.
Dive Insight:
News of the potential waiver issue comes just a few days after the Indiana Senate approved its new non-Common Core standards. The state decided to opt out of the Common Core in March and spent the last month racing to put together a new set of standards. Indiana was the first state to opt out of the Common Core, but this waiver problem may put a kink in its plans to move forward with the new standards.
While some conspiracy theorists may say the federal government is only kicking it to Indiana now that the state has dropped the Common Core, the letter from the U.S. Department of Education indicates these oversights were discovered during reviews of the state in August and September — which maybe would lead individuals to a different question: Why did it take so long to let Indiana know about these oversights?