New York earns No Child Left Behind waiver

Last week, the federal government granted New York a waiver to provisions in the No Child Left Behind Act that will allow it to set new standards for students and not be held to the 2014 deadline of the original law.

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was passed in 2001 with the goal of increasing student performance, but was widely criticized for its reliance on standardized testing. Under the law, every child was supposed to test at their grade level by 2014 — a requirement that many education officials felt was unrealistic. With the waiver granted to New York and seven other states last week, the state will now have more flexibility to close achievement gaps and set its own goals.

“The goal of NCLB was to close the achievement gap and help all students succeed,” said Board of Regents Chancellor Merry Tisch in a statement. “Some provisions of NCLB wrongly stigmatized high-needs schools whose students were making real progress. The waiver will let us designate ‘focus districts’ to help us target help toward low-performing schools struggling to improve student performance.”

The waivers were first given out by the Obama administration in February, but New York did not qualify then. States that earn the waiver have had to implement reforms in line with the administration’s Race to the Top initiative, which had states competing for more than $4 billion in government grant money (New York was awarded $700 million).

The new initiatives included states having to implement controversial teacher evaluation systems and also increase college and career readiness in its students.

New York, and many other states, achieved this by implementing the new Common Core Curriculum Standards, which will go into effect next year. The new curriculum also means that standards for students will be more rigorous, with more accountability for low-performing schools.