In late May, the Obama administration excused 8 more states from the No Child Left Behind legislation, totaling the number of freed states to 19.

To qualify for exclusion, states must meet standards that exceed the original legislation’s requirement… that all students be proficient in English and math by 2014.  Because No Child Left Behind was criticized as being too open-ended, states that have met exceedingly tougher standards have had no conflict being released.

Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education, warned that nearly 80% of U.S. states could fail this year’s annual progress benchmark towards the 2014 goal, especially since many states have interpreted their own proficiency standards that were too low or unattainable.

18 additional waiver requests are pending as new programs elaborate on No Child Left Behind, setting performance standards in a longer amount of time.

 Learn more!  Read more on the topic here.