9/7/10

Today, the Texas Education Agency announced significant changes to compliance provisions for comparability of services for No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) .  The changes in the compliance provisions may be difficult for many school districts to implement due to the late notice occurring after classes have started  for school year 2010-2011.   According to the announcement, The U.S. Department of Education (USDE) has directed the TEA to change its instructions regarding comparability of services for the 2010-2011 school year, as follows:

• "Campus groupings must be made based on broad organizational categories: Elementary, Middle, and High School. LEAs will no longer group campuses by exact grade spans. The expectation by the USDE is that this will produce fewer grade span groupings within each LEA and will result in more campuses being compared to similar campuses. The guidance document has been revised to include an example of a grouping with mixed grades (i.e., including campuses with only Grade 6, campuses with Grades 7-8, and campuses with Grades 6-8 in the same grade-span groupings).
• LEAs with fewer than 1,000 students will no longer be exempted from the comparability of services requirement. Previous guidance and instructions had stated that Single Attendance Areas were exempt from the requirement. However, clarification from the USDE has indicated that it was not the intent for the comparability of services requirement to use the same exemption that applies to the grade-span groupings that may occur when allocating funds to campuses under Section 1115. The language used by the comparability requirement is “not more than one building for each grade span.” These terms had heretofore been understood by the Agency as having the same application. Instructions and guidance for the 2010-2011 school year have been revised accordingly."

To access the announcement click on the link below.

http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/taa/nclb20100907.html