White House Grants States No Child Left Behind Waivers
The move is the president's latest attempt to use his executive power to circumvent a gridlocked Congress.
| Posted Thursday, Feb. 9, 2012, at 10:37 AM ET
Photo by Leslie E. Kossoff/Getty Images.
President Obama is expected to grant 10 states a waiver from the strict requirements of the No Child Left Behind law on Thursday, giving leeway to schools that promise to improve how they prepare and evaluate their students, the Associated Press reports.
The move comes as the deadline for full reading and math proficiency under the Bush-era education law approaches, and at a time when no viable reform of the law appears possible in Congress.
The White House tells the AP that 10 of the eleven states that applied for the additional flexibility in meeting the the law's otherwise strict and broad requirements will receive the waivers. Those states are Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Tennessee. New Mexico is still working with the administration to meet the requirements for approval for a waiver.
States applying for a waiver had to prove that they had a viable alternative to the requirements of the law. The act mandates that all students must be reading and math proficient by 2014, a requirement that has become increasingly burdensome as the deadline approaches and schools not on target to reach the goal face negative consequences.
Obama's waivers will remove that target for states that have plans to "prepare children for college and careers, set new targets for improving achievement among all students, develop meaningful teacher and principal evaluation systems, reward the best performing schools and focus help on the ones doing the worst," in the words of the AP.
Twenty-eight other states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have also vowed to seek waivers from the deadline. Pennsylvania, Texas and California, however, have said they will not seek a waiver. Last year, about half of the schools in the U.S. failed to meet the requirements of the act, which increases performance minimums each year.
Political observers note that the waivers are one of the most high-profile instances of the president attempting to work around an uncooperative Congress with executive action. In the case of No Child Left Behind, which originally benefited from bipartisan support, the measure has failed to receive much-needed updates in recent years.
