Playing the Waiver Game!
Shortly after the legislature’s passage of House Bill 3399 in May 2014 which repealed common core state standards in Oklahoma, I posted a blog titled: “Arne Doesn’t Have to Do This” to explain that Secretary Duncan had choices when it came to the reauthorization of our state’s ESEA waiver.
As a somewhat morbid example of a similarly capricious decision-making process, I shared an example from the movie “No Country for Old Men.” In particular, the scene where the merciless killer Anton Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem, tells the widow of the man he killed earlier that he now has to take her life because he “gave his word” to her husband. She tells Anton, “You don’t have to do this.” As a compromise, he flips a coin and tells her to call it. The underlying message is clear—call the coin correctly and she lives—call it wrong and she dies. If you have seen the movie, you know how this ends up for her. If not, here is the clip. (Click HERE if clip does not appear)
While the stakes relative to our ESEA waiver are clearly not as serious, one thing is common to these two situations. The person “in charge” gets to make the decision—not the coin and not the pieces of paper that constitute our waiver application. Just like it was Anton Chigurh’s choice in this scene, it was Arne Duncan’s choice relative to his department’s decision today to pull our state waiver. We apparently called the coin incorrectly.
I will get to the reasons stated by Duncan’s Department of Education to deny the waiver request in just a minute.
Before we go there, it is important to remind ourselves what the ESEA waiver request policy actually says and, just as importantly, what it DOES NOT say.
The policy requires that states requesting waivers: “…must submit a request that addresses each of the Playing the Waiver Game! | A View From The Edge: