Federal ESEA Waivers as Reform Leverage: Politics and Variation in State Implementation

Under President Obama, over 80 percent of states have received executive approval for waivers from the No Child Left Behind Act in the absence of Congressional reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). These comprehensive ESEA waivers have been quite ambitious, in that they were designed to address broad changes in K-12 education in nearly all fifty states and not in response to specific-state concerns or to foster experimentation on a focused set of issues. In reviewing the actual state implementation, we found that the Obama administration has enjoyed substantial success in using the waiver process to leverage states to adopt policy changes. But there are limits, as seen in the difficulties the administration has encountered in leveraging changes in teacher and principal evaluation, and inducing changes in student learning and performance standards. The major obstacles to the accomplishment of administration objectives are internal state political dynamics.