When Barack Obama was campaigning in 2008, he promised that he would work to get rid of No Child Left Behind legislation, but until last week, it appeared that he had forgotten that promise.

Both teacher unions, NEA and AFT, put millions of dollars into his campaign and have yet to see positive results for their investment. Certainly teacher pay being tied to evaluation was not what the teacher unions had in mind, and neither was loss of tenure and bargaining rights. The Race to the Top stimulus reform funds that required teacher pay-for-performance and massive amounts of paperwork was not a popular program either.

Pennsylvania wisely did not participate because, like so many of the plans this current administration has tried to implement, it involved extensive paperwork and more government bean counter-like jobs. Some of the Pennsylvania superintendents crunched the numbers and found there would be a net cost to accept Race to the Top money, and after studying the economics of this boondoggle, I dubbed it Race to the Bottom.

Actually, getting rid of NCLB is one of the change measures Obama proposed that wouldn't have cost taxpayers a dime, and I believe it would have "stimulated" schools to perform better if the restrictions and testing associated with NCLB had disappeared.

Speaking of change, I don't remember any of the changes promised as being record unemployment numbers, high gasoline prices, a third war being financed and escalating national debt either, but these are some of the changes that I have observed as the stock market continues to languish.

We got change all right, but not with NCLB. Now there is hope in sight -- maybe.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced last week that he would use his executive authority to free states from the NCLB law's requirement that all students must be proficient in reading and math by the year 2014. Maybe in Lake Wobegon where all the kids are above average, but not in Our Town, USA.

The ridiculousness of this requirement defies common sense now, and it should have in 2002 when this arcane law was passed during the Bush administration. The accountability part of this legislation has cost the U.S. taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, and has made it more difficult for students to receive a good well-rounded education. Meanwhile, teachers have suffered from mandated test-paranoia and have restricted daily instruction to "stuff that will be on the test."

While I share the enthusiasm of my colleagues in education who have reacted positively to the report from Secretary Duncan that he will use his executive authority to provide waivers to states that will not meet the requirement that all students must be proficient by 2014, I have to wonder how Congress will react to this. We have three branches of government.

Since Congress passed the NCLB legislation, if they want to improve it, they should pass new legislation, but no draft legislation has been introduced in either chamber this year.

It is doubtful that Congress could rewrite the current NCLB law or pass new legislation and get it on the president's desk before school starts this fall. But then I thought Congress has to approve entering into a war on foreign soil, too, but our presence in Libya without congressional approval seems to call my belief into question.

Secretary Duncan stated that by 2014, many schools will be judged as failing schools and would have to go into corrective action, so he will give waivers to states when all of their students are not judged as proficient in math and reading.

My enthusiasm for the circumventing of NCLB is less enthusiastic than many because the promise of waivers is tied to states agreeing to a package of education reforms that Secretary Duncan and President Obama both stated "haven't been determined yet." I believe someone is not "proficient" as a leader if he has wasted three years with a problem that he promised to fix, and after all this time, claims the accountability part of his reform package of education hasn't been determined yet.

Wesley Knapp, Ph.D., is superintendent of the Midd-West School District in Snyder County.