The Obama administration on Friday granted Virginia and four other states relief from the most burdensome provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind law.
The news means that schools in a total of two dozen states — including Maryland, which received a waiver in May — will no longer face sanctions if they fail to ensure that all students are proficient in math and reading by 2014.
“We would have loved to have got this done by rewriting NCLB, fixing what is wrong with the law while preserving what is right,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said. But with no consensus in sight on Capitol Hill, he said, “we simply felt children couldn’t wait any longer.”
