Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced Friday that he will unilaterally override the reading and writing proficiency requirements of No Child Left Behind. “It sounds like they’re trying to do a backdoor Round 3 of Race to the Top, and that’s astonishing,” Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute told The New York Times. Hess called Duncan’s plan “a dramatically broad reading of executive authority.”

Duncan has never explained what legal authority he has for unilateraly rewriting federal eductiona policy, but he did tell reporters on a Friday conference call: “I can’t overemphasize how loud the outcry is for us to do something right now.”