President Barack Obama will announce Thursday that 10 states have
been exempted from some of the most stringent requirements of the No
Child Left Behind law, giving them flexibility to enact their own
reforms.
The decision to grant states waivers was the first step
in the “We Can’t Wait” initiative, the White House’s work around on
education policy issues that Congress had been slow to act on. Obama
approved the waivers, which require states to lay out plans to improve
student achievement and school accountability, amid mounting frustration
about education law, which is several years overdue for an update.
The states approved for waivers are Colorado, Florida,
Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey,
Oklahoma and Tennessee. New Mexico, the one state that applied and wasn’t granted a waiver, is working with the administration to improve its proposal.
