U.S. Education chief McMahon grants waiver to Arkansas

The U.S. Department of Education has approved Arkansas’ Returning Education to the States Waiver, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced at the Hot Springs Junior Academy Tuesday (July 7).

McMahon made the announcement alongside Gov. Sarah Sanders, Education Secretary Jacob Oliva, and Sen. Tom Cotton.

“If I were going to write the headline [for] today’s announcement, which I’d be happy to do … it would be this: It’s about education, not paperwork,” Sanders said.

The officials said the waiver would provide the state and public schools more flexibility and authority while reducing the costs of complying with federal regulations. Oliva said a previous study had found that 34 cents of every dollar the state receives from the federal government was going to compliance.

The waiver allows the Arkansas Department of Education to consolidate four funding streams of $8.8 million into one stream over the next four years. Officials said doing so would reduce the resources needed for compliance. It also adds rural low-income school districts to the list of those eligible for Alternative Fund Use Authority, which allows schools to combine funding under certain programs. The waiver simplifies accountability requirements for students who complete high school coursework before entering high school. Sanders said it would mean that an eighth-grader taking ninth-grade math should only have to take the ninth grade assessment, not both. The waiver also allows students educated in alternative learning environments to be counted along with their home school, which better measures student outcomes.

“We will continue to invest and take care of the students who need it most, and we will continue to uphold all federal requirements,” Sanders said. “This just allows us to reduce administrative costs and man-hours and direct more funds toward actual classrooms.”

Oliva said students don’t come into classrooms based on funding categories.

“It allows us to take a set of funding that comes chopped up in a bunch of different pieces, and instead of writing 17 different plans in how we’re going to use this – we’re basically writing plans to use funds – we can now write one plan and use those funds to support that plan,” he said.

McMahon said Arkansas was the fifth state to receive the waiver, the others being Iowa, Louisiana, Indiana and Vermont.

“We look forward to continuing to empower more states to innovate, be free from the bureaucracy and bureaucrats like me sitting in Washington, D.C.,” she said.

She noted that President Trump had tasked her with shutting down the department and returning authority to states, parents and local communities. She praised the educational changes that have been enacted by Sanders’ administration.