U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has granted his home state a waiver from some mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act, making it the 43rd state to win such approval.
Illinois waited for the waiver for more than two years, in part because its teacher evaluation differed from the one the U.S. Department of Education was seeking for waiver states.
An Illinois state law, passed in 2010, before the administration unveiled plans for NCLB waivers, called for full implementation of a new teacher-evaluation system in all school districts by the 2016-17 school year. That’s one year later than for other waiver states.
