Be careful what you ask for

With 33 states and the District of Columbia now all approved for NCLB waivers, the federal Department of Education has the unenviable task of keeping track of what I heard someone today refer to as "34 different versions of NCLB."

For its part, the Education Department is gearing up to manage a new portfolio of states that have adopted vastly different grading systems, diverse ways of tracking the achievement of small groups of students deemed academically at risk, and new ways of evaluating teachers. Gone, for the most part, is a one-size-fits-all accountability law.At the federal level, "there are big management challenges to doing this right," said Cynthia G. Brown, the vice president for education policy at the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank. "If we're going to learn the lessons of this new state flexibility, the federal government is going to have to monitor it carefully and do deep analysis. My concern, very frankly, is they don't have enough resources devoted to it."Education Department officials say they recognize the challenge but are prepared.

The article further notes that they are doing this at the same time that they are also tracking states' implementation of what they promised in their Race to the Top applications, all of which have phased-in pieces. The fed did threaten to take back Hawaii's grant last year when they felt the state was not making sufficient progress in their promised changes; Hawaii is now considered "high risk." It remains to be seen if they can juggle both of those monitoring activities, to which they've now added nearly 900 districts competing in a district round of Race to the Top.