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The Obama administration announced Friday that Washington and Wisconsin have been granted waivers from the education law, bringing to 26 the number of states now free from many of its requirements.
Other waiver applications are still pending in 10 states and the District of Columbia. Waivers were approved last month in Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, South Dakota, Utah, and Virginia.
Allowing waivers has brought a level of creativity to education reform that was unexpected when Duncan and President Obama opened the process nearly a year ago.
Congress could come up with a great plan for reauthorizing the federal law by adopting the best ideas from the states' waiver applications, Duncan said Friday.
Lawmakers remain at a stalemate over the long overdue rewrite of the widely criticized law, which was a signature accomplishment of the George W. Bush administration. Obama sent Congress an overhaul proposal two years ago.
Making the law formally known as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act irrelevant is not the Obama administration's goal, Duncan said. ''Our Plan A is to reauthorize. We stand ready to reauthorization if it's on Monday or next week or six months from now,'' he said.
The Education Department began granting waivers in February in exchange for promises from states to improve how they prepare and evaluate students and teachers. The executive action by Obama is part of an ongoing effort to act on his own when Congress is rebuffing him.
''A strong, bipartisan reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act remains the best path forward in education reform, but as 26 states have now demonstrated, our kids can't wait any longer for Congress to act,'' Duncan said in a statement Friday.
The 10-year-old law requires all students to achieve proficient math and reading scores by 2014, a goal that many educators say is impossible.
Members of both parties say No Child Left Behind is broken, but they have been unable to agree on how to fix it. While the law has been praised for focusing on the performance of minorities, low-income students, English language learners, and special education students, it has also labeled thousands of schools as ''failing'' because of the stringent ways it measures success.
Critics also say the law has had the unintended effect of encouraging schools to focus too much on testing.
Washington state schools chief Randy Dorn said the waiver will lift the requirement that all students pass the state reading and math tests by 2014. It will also give Washington school districts more flexibility about how they spend some federal dollars.
In return, Washington will have to show improvement in test scores for subgroups of students who have historically had lower scores than average, such as those who qualify for free- or reduced-price meals.
Wisconsin's plan includes an innovative ''red flag'' system that is triggered when groups of students are failing in a variety of ways beyond test scores, including daily attendance and drop-outs. This system can be activated throughout the school year, to help kids when they need it most.
Source: The Associated Press
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