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Kentucky, Indiana and Tennessee to Get No Child Left Behind Waiver

Kentucky, Indiana, and Tennessee have been granted a waiver from federal No Child Left Behind education standards. NCLB has been criticized for setting unreachable goals for education. Kentucky was one of 11 states that applied for the waiver last fall and promised to make other commitments to school reform.

The Bluegrass state will now be charged with implementing its own accountability system, which its been preparing since 2009. Kentucky Department of Education spokeswoman Lisa Gross says the system provides a new model for school growth and will reward schools that make progress.

She says when the data is released, schools will be graded on a scale of 1 through 100, and will be labeled from "distinguished" to "needs improvement".

“And because there’s so much detail behind this one single number that each school gets I think it’s going to be a little bit of a struggle for people to get their heads wrapped around exactly what that number means," said Gross.

Gross says that number will gauge whether the school receives additional resources and must revise its improvement plan.

Reports from public radio stations in Kentucky.