(RALEIGH) -- North Carolina school districts could soon get a break from the stringent testing mandates in the No Child Left Behind law, as long as they pursue other reform efforts.

Superintendent of Public Instruction June Atkinson said she’ll pursue an exemption from some reporting requirements. However, the proposal must first get approval from the State Board of Education.
 
“We want to have our schools measured by ABC accountability model rather than the all or nothing that is a flawed system of No Child Left Behind,” Atkinson said in an interview.
Critics argued that schools have been unfairly punished by the law, which required all students to be proficient in math and reading by the end of the 2013-14 school year. Schools that fail to meet those performance goals could lose federal funding. President Obama recently authorized federal education officials to grant the waivers because Congress failed to address those concerns and rewrite the widely criticized law.
 
“In a time where we have to get better, faster education than we ever have, we can’t afford to have the law of the land be one that has so many perverse incentives or disincentives to the type of progress we want to see,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan told reporters last week.
 
North Carolina Association of Educators president Sherri Strickland also said the NCLB requirements are too punitive. “Instead of focusing on how to help and support schools that may not be doing all that they should be for students, it was about how do you punish those schools, which doesn’t help anybody,” Strickland added. “The whole notion that you can legislate students to be at grade-level by a certain point in time was always a flawed and dangerous way to look at how we improve public education.”
 
In the meantime, both Atkinson and Strickland said federal lawmakers shouldn’t give up on reforming the existing law.