President Barack Obama on Thursday will free 10 states from the strict and sweeping requirements of the No Child Left Behind law, giving leeway to states that promise to improve how they prepare and evaluate students, The Associated Press has learned.
The first 10 states to receive the waivers are Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Tennessee. The only state that applied for the flexibility and did not get it, New Mexico, is working with the administration to get approval, a White House official told the AP.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the states had not yet been announced. A total of 28 other states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have signaled that they, too, plan to seek waivers — a sign of just how vast the law’s burdens have become as a big deadline nears.
[…]
In September, Obama called President George W. Bush’s most hyped domestic accomplishment an admirable but flawed effort that hurt students instead of helping them. He said action was necessary because Congress failed to update the law despite widespread bipartisan agreement that it needs fixing. Republicans have charged that by granting waivers, Obama was overreaching his authority.
The executive action by Obama is one of his most prominent in an ongoing campaign to act on his own where Congress is rebuffing him. No Child Left Behind was primarily designed to help the nation’s poor and minority children and was passed a decade ago with widespread bipartisan support. It has been up for renewal since 2007. But lawmakers have been stymied for years by competing priorities, disagreements over how much of a federal role there should be in schools and, in the recent Congress, partisan gridlock.
For all the cheers that states may have about the changes, the move also reflects the sobering reality that the United States is not close to the law’s original goal: getting children to grade level in reading and math.
[…]
While the president’s action marks a change in education policy in America, the reach is limited. The populous states of Pennsylvania, Texas and California are among those that have not said they will seek a waiver, although they could still do so later.
On Tuesday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said states without a waiver will be held to the standards of No Child Left Behind because “it’s the law of the land.”
Some conservatives viewed Obama’s plan not as giving more flexibility to states, but as imposing his vision on them. Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., who chairs the House Education and Workforce Committee, said Thursday that, “This notion that Congress is sort of an impediment to be bypassed, I find very, very troubling in many, many ways.”
[…]
A Senate committee last fall passed a bipartisan bill to update the law, but it was opposed by the administration and did not go before the full Senate for a vote.
Don’t like the law? Ignore it — and ignore the Congress.
Separation of powers is for chumps who adhere to the Constitution. But when you own the Justice Department and the Senate, who’s going to stop you from shedding the hoary shackles of some dead old white men so that you — the Chosen One — can make all the decisions for the rest of us? We can’t wait!
For our own good. And for the children.
With each new brazen step, this President is weakening the hold of the Constitution over an imperialist central authority hellbent on removing the consent of the governed from a representative republic.
So. What are you going to do about it?
(thanks to JD)
The Good Man® cometh.
I forget, in 1999, were there a bunch of ‘conservative’ Venezuelans running around, reassuring their side that Hugo Chavez might disagree on policy, there’s no reason to doubt that he’s a Good Man, who only wants What’s Best For the Country?
Or is that sort of self-destructive behavior more of a Republican thing?
In a peach.
Or some word that sounds eerily similar.
Odd we’re not hearing much about abuse of signing statements and unitary executive any more.
So we can add signing his name to this hectic schedule.
Unless it was “robo-signed” to save him time for sports and naps.
Don’t like the law? Ignore it — and ignore the Congress.
It’s not so much that they didn’t like the law, it’s that they didn’t like what the results of the tests that the law required were showing. So we do away with the law…
and pretend not to notice the scabrous suppurating ass of the NEA as it parades down the street in it’s brand new wardrobe.
I’ve been rewatching the old BBC productions of Shakespeare’s history plays. It’s quite remarkable to realize how little besides technology has actually changed.
We move ever closer to the abyss.
Over-reach by the courts? Spending our money without our consent? Overruling state governments? Disrupting commerce? Good thing that sort of thing couldn’t happen today — otherwise, we’d be left with a list of Causes and Necessity of taking up Arms.
Does anyone still wonder why students are no longer taught history?
OT: I belong to the YWCA because it’s only 1.5 miles from where I live. When choosing a gym, the closest choice is usually the wisest choice, because it’s more difficult to talk yourself out of going.
As I was leaving, I heard one of the employees telling a mother with two kids, one quite fat and the other still young and not fat, that they have “a nutrition program for Latinas.”
I had two responses that I didn’t share. The first was, why not have a program for everyone? White kids get fat too. The second was, since when did kids make the choice about what they eat? That’s on the parents. A nutrition program is basically telling the kids to nag their parents about what they parents are feeding them.
In my very limited experience, the usual problem is finding something the kid will eat that isn’t cookies and candy.
I wonder what Teddy – W’s temporary best bud and co-creator of this let-the-feds-do-education initiative – would have thought of these waivers. But I don’t wonder much, and I do note that Teddy’s name and fame seem to have dropped quietly out of the reporting of these events. I don’t wonder much about that, either.
“So. What are you going to do about it?”
Vote for Anybody But Obama.
Waivers of course can themselves be waived at any convenient moment. All this would do is cement in place the precise power arrangement that is the throbbing heart of the progressive movement as per…
Bingo. Heard on the radio this afternoon the State of Ga is already planning on a new set of tests to get the scores up.
The solution to low test scores? Easier tests, obviously.
Laws are just trial balloons.
I wonder what Teddy … would have thought of these waivers
He would have loved them. Because as much as this is about hiding the decline, as it were, it’s also about upending the second part of the NCLB “grand bargain,” which was, once we had definitive proof that public schools were failing via the required tests, and once we had definitive proof that public schools were incapable of reform, as demonstrated through failure to show improvement via the required tests, then we were going to get more Vouchers and more Charter School Charters and all that other good stuff that would give parents Choice and Control over the education of their children.
And we can’t have that. Not when there’s beaks to be wetted and rice bowls to be filled.
Chalk this up to another example of why you can’t make deals with Democrats, and should be wary of Republicans who want to.
“So. What are you going to do about it?”
I, for one, am going to leave for the New World with its liberty from totalitarian govenrments, its freedom of religion, its, …..wait, there is no New World? Not even a little corner somewhere? Nobody told me!
Somebody should find a YouTube of that “Off World Colonies” add from Blade Runner for RI Red.
“A new life awaits you.“
Sorry, all space travel has been cancelled, we spent all the money on free rubbers.
This:
And that:
You know, maybe it should be the case that all laws on the books must be enforced or repealed.
[…] 2012, Barack Obama waives a federal statute without being granted the authority to do so. The Health Care Act grants the President that […]
Here in the City of Atlanta we’ve just gone through a massive scandal, where teachers and administrators colluded to change test answers so children would pass. The driving factors were teacher incompetence, student disinterest in acting “white”, and a need to keep scores up.
I’m glad that, via The Won, we’re now able to eliminate at least two of those factors.
Now, if we can just eliminate laws about juvenile delinquency, Atlanta’s going to start looking like a great place to live.
Oh, and let’s just start spinning crime statistics.
Now, if I could just find some credulous fool to buy my house…