Ohio among 8 states to get waiver from No Child Left Behind

DORIE TURNER

AP Edu­ca­tion Writer

ATLANTA — Another eight states are gain­ing flex­i­bil­ity from the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law, U.S. Edu­ca­tion Sec­re­tary Arne Dun­can said Tuesday.

The Edu­ca­tion Depart­ment has approved waivers for Ohio, Con­necti­cut, Delaware, Louisiana, Mary­land, New York, North Car­olina and Rhode Island. Eigh­teen other states and Wash­ing­ton, D.C., also applied for a waiver and could receive approval in com­ing weeks.

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s admin­is­tra­tion is grant­ing waivers in exchange for promises from states to improve how they pre­pare and eval­u­ate stu­dents. In all, 19 states have been given waivers so far.

“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,” Dun­can said in a call with reporters.

He was in Con­necti­cut to make the announcement.

The waivers are a stop­gap mea­sure until Con­gress rewrites the decade-old law, which has been up for renewal since 2007. Fed­eral law­mak­ers agree the law needs to be changed, but they’ve bick­ered over how to do that.

The states that won waivers ear­lier this year are: Col­orado, Florida, Geor­gia, Indi­ana, Ken­tucky, Mass­a­chu­setts, Min­nesota, New Jer­sey, New Mex­ico, Okla­homa and Tennessee.

No Child Left Behind requires all stu­dents to be pro­fi­cient in read­ing and math by 2014. The waivers throw out that fun­da­men­tal require­ment, pro­vided they offer a viable alter­na­tive plan.

Under the deal, 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.

Obama has called for­mer Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s most hyped domes­tic accom­plish­ment an admirable but flawed effort that hurt stu­dents instead of help­ing them. Repub­li­cans have charged Obama is over­reach­ing his author­ity by grant­ing waivers and is impos­ing his vision for edu­ca­tion on states.

States have been ask­ing for relief from the law as the 2014 dead­line neared.

“The waiver lets New York move away from NCLB require­ments that were unpro­duc­tive or unre­al­is­tic,” state Edu­ca­tion Com­mis­sioner John B. King said in a pre­pared state­ment. “We’re mak­ing a new set of promises to our stu­dents. Now we have to live up to those promises.”

Dun­can said the Obama admin­is­tra­tion prefers that Con­gress fix the law but insisted stu­dents can’t wait for that. In an elec­tion year in a divided Con­gress, that appears unlikely to happen.

Posted by AP News on May 29 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.