Education Officials Seek Comment on School Choice Waiver

The Wyoming Department of Education (WDE) is requesting public comment regarding a request for a one-year waiver of the Title I, Part A, of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

The provision requires local educational agencies (LEA) to provide parents of eligible students with notice of their public school choice options at least 14 days before the start of the school year. School choice options are determined under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) measures.

This waiver will only affect those Title I schools identified in holding or warning year status. Those Title I schools in improvement, corrective action, or restructuring status will need to comply with the requirement of sending out the school choice notification within 14 days before the start of school. The purpose of the waiver is to ensure that all LEAs are able to comply with this requirement with respect to students in those schools.

The WDE is requesting this waiver because the WDE has been transitioning state assessments used for AYP calculations to measure the adopted standards in reading and math. The 2014 test is sufficiently different in content to warrant not using the same scale, as well as setting new cut scores.

According to a release from the Wyoming Department of Education, these differences will delay the 2014 AYP results until after the beginning of the 2014- 2015 school year. This delay prevents parents from having the information needed for school choice prior to the commencement of the next school year.

he comment window on this waiver request will run from June 23, 2014, through July 2, 2014, at 5:00 p.m