Waivers for Waivers? What California Wants | California Progress Report

Waivers for Waivers? What California Wants | California Progress Report:

Waivers for Waivers? What California Wants

by jeffson

By Peter Schrag
You don’t have to look far to understand why California, like many other states, wants a waiver from key provisions of NCLB, the ten-year-old federal No Child Left Behind law. If we don’t get it, it may start to cost us.
But what California wants is unique. We want not only a waiver but also a waiver from the conditions U.S Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has imposed for getting a waiver. Is that reasonable, or is it chutzpah?
From the start, the federal law’s impossible requirement that all American schoolchildren make “adequate yearly progress” (AYP) toward academic perfection in 2014 – even children who began school speaking no English -- was an invitation to fraud, confusion and demoralization.
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Critics struggle to end 'pay to play' in school bonds

Will Evans

Boaz Yiftach/freedigitalphotos.net

Critics of the practice in which financial firms help pass school bonds that they profit from are continuing to push for reforms, but so far have faced resistance and failure.
In California, underwriting companies hired by school districts to sell bonds often make campaign contributions to help convince voters to pass the bond measures. A California Watch investigation found that leading underwriters gave $1.8 million over the last five years to successful bond measures, and in almost every case school districts gave underwriting contracts to those same firms.
Underwriters are essentially middlemen, buying bonds from districts and selling them to investors at a higher price. Underwriters say they generally only give campaign contributions after getting hired; school districts argue