The U.S. Department of Education announced today that two more states–Washington and Wisconsin–have been granted waivers from “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB), also known as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). This  brings the total number of states that have been granted waivers to 26–which means that more than half of states are now free from the law’s requirements–and 10 other states plus the District of Columbia also have requested waivers. In a press release announcing the latest waivers, the Department of Education said that NCLB’s “rigid, top-down prescriptions for reform, while well-intentioned, proved burdensome for many states.”