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No Child Left Behind rewrote our nation’s education policies before a decade. Now, President Obama freed some states from some of its important provisions, including a deadline to make all students achieve proficiency in reading and math by 2012.

New Jersey, Tennessee, Florida, Massachusetts, Kentucky, Indiana, Georgia, Minnesota, Oklahoma and Colorado are the ten states that receive waivers from the No Child Left Behind law, which was passed during Bush era. The Obama Administration freed these states in exchange for which they need to embrace the educational agenda of the administration. They also need to support the administration’s focus on accountability and teacher effectiveness.

Federal officials said that the application of New Mexico was not approved as it was incomplete and so they would continue to work with the state. They also stated that waivers granted to Georgia, Florida and Oklahoma were reliant on their policies and legislation allowing them to make such changes. The federal officials added that 28 other states, Puerto Rico and District of Columbia also have indicated that they have plans to seek waivers. The applications will be due at the end of this February.

Obama announced this waiver program in September. Many states have adopted academic standards and many other measures that clashed with the No Child Left Behind Law. The law was passed in 2002 with huge support from bipartisan and has been renewed since 2007. Education officials had criticized the deadline on 2014 for math and reading proficiency. They felt that it was not possible to achieve this high standard, if the needs of some of the children having several drawbacks were taken into consideration.

Obama specified that though the goals of “No Child Left Behind” law were right, we have to do it in a way that does not drive teacher to teach to the test or to encourage students to reduce their standards in their attempt to avoid earning a bad name.

Obama has been striving to fix the issues in the No Child Left Behind Law. He said that his administration has offered the same deal to every state. He told the states that if they are willing to set higher standards than the ones that were set by the Act, then the administration will give them the flexibility to meet those standards.

Obama’s plans were criticized by some Congressional Republican leaders. They feel that Obama is trying to politicize educational policy. John Kline, chairman of the House Committee in education introduced two bills on the same day the waivers came to address some of the same issues.

Arne Duncan, the secretary of the Department of Education said that the states that received waivers had agreed to adopt some standards for college and for preparing students to better their career opportunities. They had accepted to implement new accountability systems that offer them more flexibility in assessing student achievement and in developing measure to improve teacher effectiveness.

Obama said that Massachusetts, one of the states included in the waiver set a goal to reduce the number of underperforming students over the next six years. Florida aims to get top five ranks in test scores nationwide. Colorado is going to launch a website that lets teachers and parents monitor the students’ progress. Under the waiver program, the states will set new targets to improve student achievement.