Obama rolling back Bush education law

Obama rolling back Bush education law

WASHINGTON

The Obama administration is offering states a way around provisions of the once-heralded No Child Left Behind law, contending many elements of the Bush-era education initiative have become barriers to learning and that too many schools, even those showing modest progress, risk being labeled as failing.

States will be allowed to ask the Education Department to be exempted from some of the law’s requirements if they meet certain conditions. They include enacting standards to prepare students for college and careers and making teachers and principals more accountable.

President Barack Obama planned to discuss the changes today at the White House.

Libyan rebels: We’veSFlbblocked escape path

BENGHAZI, Libya

After fierce battles in desert towns and oases, revolutionary forces now control most of Libya’s vast south, making it harder for Moammar Gadhafi’s loyalists to flee into neighboring Niger, Chad and Algeria, southern representatives to the interim ruling authority said Thursday.

They said 18 revolutionary fighters died in the final battle for the deep south’s largest city, Sabha, and that pro-Gadhafi resistance consisted now of a few last pockets of holdouts.

A CNN crew traveling with the former rebels found a warehouse near Sabha that contained thousands of barrels of yellowcake uranium, which can be refined for use in nuclear weaponry.

United Nations atomic-energy monitors said the Gadhafi regime had declared the site and it had been inventoried. Ensuring that the site is secure now falls to Libya’s interim authorities until the area is stable enough for inspectors to visit, said Gill Tudor, a spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

Combined dispatches