The U.S. Department of Education has approved Missouri's application for a waiver from key provisions of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, commonly known as the No Child Left Behind Act. The waiver will take effect starting in August with the 2012-2013 school year. You can view a copy of the DESE news release here and the two FAQs prepared by DESE here and here.
MSTA expressed concerns early in the waiver application process as noted in this post from March 6 and February 20.
“Our hope is that those concerns have been adequately addressed and the final result is something that we can live with,” said MSTA Executive Director Bruce Moe.
The Commissioner acknowledged in her communication to the Missouri education community that, "there will be a multitude of details about implementation to work out—and we remain committed to working with you to address these…" [emphasis in the original message]
"I appreciate the Commissioner's commitment to working with us on the implementation details," Moe said. "MSTA will hold her to it."
You can expect more information from MSTA on this issue in the coming weeks.
We certainly look forward to MSTA's feedback on the waiver and working with teachers on the Educator Evaluation System Pilot this year.
Some of the links above are broken, but here's DESE's general FAQ: http://dese.mo.gov/qs/esea-waiver-faqs.htm, and here's the one for teachers: http://dese.mo.gov/qs/documents/qs-esea-flexibility-waiver-educator-faq.pdf.
Sarah Potter, DESE Communications Coordinator
Posted by: Sarah Potter | July 02, 2012 at 11:45 AM
Thanks for letting us know about the links, Sarah! We've checked them and they should be working now. MSTA equally committed to working with you and DESE and will continue to share the details on the process and outcomes.
Posted by: Aurora Meyer | July 08, 2012 at 11:07 PM