Rick Miller, left, executive director of the California Office to Reform Education, confers with Michael Fullan in Sacramento earlier this year. Fullan, a Canadian author on education reform, is the architect of the collaboration-focused model of school reform, on which CORE has based its NCLB waiver application. Photo by John Fensterwald.
Representatives of nine California districts did not head home from Washington on Friday, after two and a half days of intense discussions with federal officials, with the waiver from the No Child Left Behind law that they had been hoping for.
But Rick Miller, executive director of the nonprofit district collaborative that is submitting the waiver application, called the talks “productive” and said the districts are “one iteration away” from finishing a document for a final up or down decision by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Duncan did not participate in the discussions last week, Miller said.
Fresno Unified Superintendent Michael Hanson characterized the status of the waiver as “closer
