LWSD to set aside 20 percent of Title I budget to be in compliance with legislation

The U.S. Department of Education revoked Washington state's current waiver from the accountability requirements of the 2002 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (commonly referred to as No Child Left Behind or NCLB).

May 9, 2014 6:36 pm

The U.S. Department of Education revoked Washington state’s current waiver from the accountability requirements of the 2002 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (commonly referred to as No Child Left Behind or NCLB).

The state has been operating under a conditional waiver for the past two school years. This waiver allowed local school districts to determine how best to use federal Title I funds to meet the needs of students who are not at standard in order to reach proficiency.

Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) is one of the cornerstones of the No Child Left Behind Act. In the state of Washington, it is a measure of year-to-year student achievement on the state assessments in reading and mathematics. If schools do not meet AYP, they are placed at different “steps of improvement.” The goal of AYP is for all students to reach proficiency in both subjects by 2014.

What’s next

In the 2014-15 school year, Washington will once again report AYP. Districts that do not meet AYP are required to “set aside” 20 percent of the Title I funds they receive from the federal government. This money must be reserved for either supplemental educational services or for transportation to support public school choice (a step of improvement where students who attend schools that do not meet AYP are offered a chance to enroll at a different school in the district that has met AYP). Money that goes unused for these purposes is returned to the district, but not until the school year is well underway and too late to be included in that year’s operating budget.

Impact for Lake Washington School District (LWSD)

LWSD’s total Title I budget is $1,632,863 and officials will set aside 20 percent ($326,573) to be in compliance with this legislation.

Title I schools that were in steps of improvement in 2010-11 will continue in improvement for 2014-15. According to a press release, the district anticipates that additional schools that do not have 100 percent of the students at standard, as measured by the 2014 Measurement of Student Progress (MSP) that students are currently taking, will be in some step of improvement as well. Results from the spring 2014 state tests will be released in late summer.