President Obama on Friday will offer states a way out of the No Child Left Behind law, free up more than $1 billion in education funding and give local governments more power to set educational standards, according to senior administration officials.
A long-time critic of the education reform law implemented by his predecessor, Obama will announce that, starting in November, the Department of Education will accept state applications for waivers allowing them to escape federal rules that largely dictate student testing and teacher evaluation standards.
“To help states, districts and schools that are ready to move forward with education reform, our administration will provide flexibility from the law in exchange for a real commitment to undertake change,” Obama will say, according to prepared remarks. “The purpose is not to give states and districts a reprieve from accountability, but rather to unleash energy to improve our schools at the local level.”
In announcing the changes, Obama is sidestepping Congress and using his executive power to create the waiver program. He said he was forced to act because Congress has been too slow in overhauling the nine-year-old law.
“The reality is, another school year is starting under a broken law,” a senior administration official said. “We have to stop lying to children and parents.”
The president’s initiative will be met with resistance on Capitol Hill, where House Education Committee Chairman John Kline, R-Minn., is challenging Obama’s authority to issue waivers to states without congressional approval.
“To give any executive branch official this kind of authority to rewrite law, if you will, seems to me to be quite dangerous,” said Grover J. Whitehurst, a former Department of Education official now at the Brookings Institution. “It raises fundamental constitutional and governance issues.”
The No Child Left Behind law, which then-President George W. Bush implemented in 2002, has been widely criticized for its heavy emphasis on standardized tests and use of students’ scores to determine how much federal money schools receive. Critics charge that the system fails to consider the variance in financial and educational needs of students, teachers and school districts.
Under Obama’s plan, states would be able to waive the law’s requirements if they meet new standards spelled out by the Department of Education.
The standards would require states to rapidly overhaul the lowest-performing 5 percent of their schools and identify targeted reforms at an additional 10 percent of “focus” schools — those institutions with large achievement gaps and low graduation rates. States would also be required to administer standardized tests and create a comprehensive teacher and principle evaluation system.
In turn, the states would have greater freedom to implement education reforms and shift their focus from test scores to other measurable forms of student progress. The waivers would also free up at least $1 billion in federal funding for states that is now tied to mandates in No Child Left Behind, according to administration officials.
