The new teacher evaluation systems were part of the requirements for waivers from the federal education law known as "No Child Left Behind." If the states meet the requirements of the waiver, they won't need to have every child meet state academic standards in reading and math by January 2014.
So far, 40 states and the District of Columbia have been granted a one- or two-year reprieve from the requirements of the U.S. education law, passed more than a decade ago. A group of districts in California recently were given a different kind of waiver from requirements of the federal law.
Washington, Oregon and Kansas had been placed on "high risk status" and given until the end of the 2012-13 school year to fix the way to include improvement in student test scores as a factor in teacher evaluations.
