(Image source: The Washington Times)

BY TRACY PFEIFFER
ANCHOR MEGAN MURPHY

You're watching multisource politics news analysis from Newsy.

If you want something done -- better do it yourself. That seems to be the tactic U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is adopting after the announcement the Obama administration will offer states waivers for some parts of the controversial No Child Left Behind. ABC has his briefing.

ARNE DUNCAN, U.S. SECY EDUCATION: "The law -- No Child Left Behind -- as it currently stands is four years overdue for being rewritten. It is far too punitive, it is far too prescriptive, lead to a dummying down of standards, lead to a narrowing of the curriculum."
 
At the crux of the issue -- is the 2014 deadline -- for 100 percent of students to perform at their grade level in science and math. The Newark mayor tells MSNBC -- the mad focus on test scores -- has frenzied the American school system.

CORY BOOKER, NEWARK MAYOR: “I’m a person that believes you should have objective criteria for measuring success, but what’s happening right now in the United States of America is people squeezing out everything else in education to focus on performance on standardized tests. ... We should have high expectations for our kids, but we should have real ways measuring progress to that.”

But the waivers won’t be doled out to just any state -- Duncan says the administration will release more details and requirements in September.
A blogger for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a few ideas about what they’ll ask for.

“Adopt career and work ready standards, focus on closing the achievement gap, impose a ‘flexible and targeted’ accountability system for teachers that considers student progress and develop and use data to inform policy and practice.”

But besides the politics of the Act -- some are appalled that Duncan and the administration would completely sidestep Congress in this process. The director of education policy at the American Enterprise Institute tells the Christian Science Monitor -- it seems fishy.

“It’s a really novel interpretation of waiver authority – not simply requesting that states demonstrate they’ll comply with the spirit of the law, or that states will find other ways to achieve NCLB’s ends, but instead offering to let states evade federal law if they promise to do something else that Obama happens to like.”
 
States that do not apply for the waivers will still be subject to the 2014 deadline.

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