Eight additional states have been granted waivers from George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.
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In addition, President Barack Obama’s administration is granting waivers on the condition that states fulfill their promises to improve how they prepare and evaluate students. So far, 19 states have been given waivers.
According to the Associated Press, eight states are gaining flexibility from the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law.
According to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan:
“These states are getting more flexibility with federal funds and relief from NCLB’s one-size-fits-all mandate in order to develop and implement locally tailored solutions to meet their unique educational challenges.”
The waivers are a temporary fix until Congress rewrites the decade-old law, which has been up for renewal since 2007. Federal lawmakers realize that the law needs to be changed for improvements, but as a surprise to no one, they have bickered about how to do so.
The states that won waivers earlier in the year are: Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Tennessee.
The waivers toss the No Child Left Behind requirement that all students must have adept skills in reading and math by 2014. That is if the states devise a feasible alternative plan.
The basics of the deal are as follows: the states must show they will prepare children for college and careers, set new targets for improving achievement among all students, reward the best performing schools and focus help on the ones doing the worst.
Congress, in recent years, has been plagued by filibusters, turmoil between parties, and indecision. If there is ever an ideal setting to put these ideological differences to rest, it is with NCLB and the American youth education in the future. Congress must be able to agree on a set of reforms to make NCLB as monumental in actual schools as it appears on paper.
