Texas Education Commissioner Michael Williams announced March 1 that he has formally submitted a request to the U.S. Department of Education to waive specific requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The waiver would suspend penalties for failing to meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) standards. The majority of Texas public schools failed to meet AYP standards last year due to the transition to new testing requirements. The transition also prompted the state to suspend its own requirements for the year. Williams requested the ability to:

• Create a single system of interventions based on accountability results.
• Allow the Texas Education Agency to rely solely on the state’s rigorous teacher certification standards, which are supported by the state’s educator evaluation system.
• Allow school districts or charters to implement school-wide interventions in any of its support, focus, or priority schools, even if those schools do not have a poverty percentage of 40 percent or more.