Tennessee has filed for a waiver from the No Child Left Behind act. The federal law requires a certain percentage of students to make what is considered Adequate Yearly Progress.
Under the proposed waiver, Tennessee would require yearly improvement in schools, but not nearly as much as No Child Left Behind. For example, while the federal law requires all third graders to be proficient in reading by 2014, Tennessee’s goal is only 60 percent.
According to Governor Haslam, No Child Left Behind’s standards are no longer serving the interest of education reform.
“While No Child Left Behind has been very valuable, we feel like it’s maybe outlived it’s usefulness in its current form, it needs to be overhauled, we don’t see the action coming from congress to do that anytime soon, and then finally we think states really do know what we should do.”
He says Tennessee proved that in its application for Race to the Top.
As Tennessee requested a waiver from the federal law today, a report was released saying that only half of schools are meeting current No Child Left Behind standards.
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