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Less than two months after granting Virginia a under the No Child Left Behind Act, the U.S. Department of Education has backtracked on its unconditional approval. The move came after the state widely publicized new academic-achievement targets for schools that do little, if anything, to close the gaps between low-performing groups of students, such as blacks and Hispanics, and their white peers.

The Virginia stumble illustrates the difficult, yet important, task facing the federal department, which must manage a patchwork of 34 different, complex accountability systems now that a majority of states are free from some of the core tenets of the NCLB law. The list of waiver states could grow, too, as a few more states seek the flexibility this fall.

Fierce Criticism

Virginia鈥檚 new annual measurable objectives, or AMOs, set off a firestorm of controversy within the state once they were released in July. They sparked , state officials, and even a in protest over what were seen as low expectations set for students deemed at risk academically.

In sent Aug. 29 to Virginia schools chief Patricia I. Wright, federal officials outlined an agreement in which the state will redo its AMOs so that students who are furthest behind make the greatest progress. The state board of education is expected to approve new AMOs at its Sept. 27 meeting, the letter says, and submit them for federal approval.

鈥淎mbitious but achievable AMOs that require significant closing of achievement gaps between subgroups of students are a critical element of those plans,鈥� wrote Deborah S. Delisle, the federal Education Department鈥檚 chief K-12 official.

The problem, both sides say, is that Virginia recently adopted new, more rigorous tests, and the results weren鈥檛 available at the time of the waiver application. No one could know how the AMOs would play out using the new methodology.

But the Education Department went ahead and approved the methodology anyway鈥攚ithout conditions鈥攚hen it awarded Virginia a waiver in June.

The result: Virginia publicized new AMOs that may have been realistic, but that weren鈥檛 very ambitious for subgroups of low-performing students.

As one example, according to a state education department from July, after the test results had become available, the gap in math-proficiency rates between black and white students on the 2011-12 state tests was 23 percentage points. By the 2017-18 school year, or five years from now, the goal is only to narrow the gap by 2 percentage points.

In the end, Virginia aspires to have 57 percent of its black students proficient in math by 2017-18, compared with 78 percent of white students.

Advocates Cautious

Advocates who fought the state鈥檚 AMOs are cautiously optimistic that revisions will lead to higher expectations for all students.

鈥淚t certainly looks like things are moving in the right direction, but we really won鈥檛 know how well it serves students until we see the details,鈥� said Angela Ciolfi, the legal director of the JustChildren Program in Charlottesville, Va., which works on education and juvenile-justice issues.

鈥淚 hope this represents a renewed commitment to closing the achievement gap,鈥� she said, 鈥渁nd not just plugging new numbers into the same old formula, which everybody acknowledges won鈥檛 address the problem.鈥�

Complex Methodology

The original methodology behind Virginia鈥檚 AMOs, which was approved by federal officials, is complex. It focuses on closing gaps between students and subgroups in low-performing schools versus high-performing schools. It does not focus on closing gaps between at-risk student groups, such as low-income students, and their better-off peers. That was one of the hallmarks of the NCLB law, and something the department says is still critically important.

The new methodology, said Virginia education department spokesman Charles Pyle, will set the benchmarks so the lowest-performing students will be expected to post bigger gains to close the gaps.

鈥淎MOs were never meant as aspirational goals for different sugroups,鈥� he said.

The federal department was aware of potential problems with Virginia鈥檚 AMO process. The peer reviewers who judged the state鈥檚 original application, submitted in February, found big problems with that particular section of the application, noting a 鈥渓ack of clarity鈥� on how academic targets were set. The department followed up citing a 鈥渟ignificant concern鈥� with the 鈥渓ack of ambitious but achievable鈥� AMOs.

Virginia revised its application, which eventually won federal approval. But the state did not provide any modeling on what the new AMOs might look like, in part because base-line test results weren鈥檛 available.

But education policy analysts who studied the waiver applications note that the approved methodology, by itself, may have been flawed. Virginia wants to close gaps between the schools at the 90th percentile for achievement and those in the 20th percentile. If high-performing schools start doing worse and low-performing schools stay even, then the gap actually narrows鈥攂ut not because low-performing schools are doing a better job. Effectively, the achievement gap could get smaller without student improvement.

鈥淣ow the task is to ensure that the state has set a high bar for its students,鈥� said Jeremy Ayers, the associate director of federal education programs at the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank, who has studied the waiver applications.