[Source:  Education Week]
Now that more than half the country is operating with waivers of key mandates of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, the U.S. Department of Education must turn to overseeing a hodgepodge of 34 different state accountability systems and holding states to the promises they made to win the new flexibility.
As the school year begins, states are preparing to provide their first evidence that they are implementing their plans as proposed—and are already asking federal officials if they can tweak their proposals.
For its part, the Education Department is gearing up to manage a new portfolio of states that have adopted vastly different grading systems, diverse ways of tracking the achievement of small groups of students deemed academically at risk, and new ways of evaluating teachers. Gone, for the most part, is a one-size-fits-all accountability law.
Read the Rest of this Article on Education Week.com