JACKSONVILLE, Fla.-- News of a change in the No Child Left Behind Act brought a sigh of relief to failing schools in Jacksonville, perhaps prematurely.
President Barack Obama's Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced Monday that some states would be granted waivers to the law, allowing some failing schools to get a passing grade.
"It is far too punitive. It is far too prescriptive. It led to a dummying down of standards," said Duncan.
He called the current No Child Left Behind Act a slow moving trainwreck, and now he's poised to override the core function of the law: to have 100% of children proficient in math and reading by 2014.
"At a time when we have to get better, faster at education than we ever have, we can't have the law of the land be one that has so many perverse incentives, or distinctiveness to the kind of progress we want to see," he said.