Dive Brief:

• On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Education announced that seven states would get additional years of flexibility from No Child Left Behind's strict performance benchmarks.
• Those states: Tennessee, Alaska, Indiana, Maryland, New Jersey, Oregon and Utah.
• Five of the states got three additional years, but Utah, as requested, received a one-year extension and Tennessee got four years.

Dive Insight:

The waiver system is supposed to be a stopgap. It became clear shortly after No Child Left Behind passed in 2001 that few if any schools could meet its 100% proficiency requirements, among others. But the consequences for not meeting them were high. Districts risked losing federal dollars and having their decision-making curtailed. Under Obama, the U.S. Department of Education has issued waivers for the NCLB-era mandates, after the law expired in 2007.

With any luck, states will no longer have to rely on the waivers to dodge the NCLB requirements. The new rewrite of NCLB would put an end to some of its strictest demands and to the waivers. However, that bill still has to make its way through a bipartisan conference process between the House and Senate and pass a vote in each chamber before making its way to the president's desk.