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RALEIGH (MCT) -- North Carolina will seek a waiver from key provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind law, which has been criticized for too much emphasis on high-stakes standardized tests.

President Barack Obama announced Friday that he would give states relief from the 2002 law as long as those states present plans to close achievement gaps and hold schools accountable for graduating students who are prepared for college and careers.

Among other things, No Child Left Behind specified that all students meet proficiency standards in reading and math by 2014. North Carolina, like many states, is far from that goal. Based on data from the 2010-11 year, only 27.7 percent of state schools met "adequate yearly progress" on the standards.

Under the law, North Carolina schools with a certain percentage of low-income families had to offer students extra tutoring or transfers to other schools if they failed repeatedly to make that progress.

Speaking at the White House, Obama said it was time to act because Congress had not revamped the Bush-era education law, which was due for a rewrite four years ago. No Child Left Behind has been on the books for nearly a decade, and while its aims were laudable, Obama said, the law created negative consequences in practice.

"Higher standards are the right goal. Accountability is the right goal. Closing the achievement gap is the right goal. And we've got to stay focused on those goals," Obama said. "But experience has taught us that, in its implementation, No Child Left Behind had some serious flaws that are hurting our children instead of helping them. Teachers too often are being forced to teach to the test. Subjects like history and science have been squeezed out."

Worse, Obama said, schools have lowered standards to avoid being labeled as failures under the law's all-or-nothing criteria. Republican lawmakers have criticized Obama's move, saying it's a bad precedent for the administration to essentially dump provisions of a law enacted by Congress.

The law was signed by George W. Bush in 2002 and had bipartisan support in Congress. Proponents argued the law would increase accountability for teachers and principals and provide parents with transfer options if their children were stuck in failing schools.

It also put a focus on the racial achievement gap by focusing on minority students whose test results were reported in subgroups within schools. But the law has also been criticized by educators for fostering a high-stakes testing environment that turned back progress in the classroom.

Some states and districts have seen cheating scandals in which school officials changed student test answers to improve results.

Critics also said the law unfairly branded schools as failures if one small segment of the student population did not perform well on the tests. Obama cited the example of a charter school in Worcester, Mass., where all graduates in the last three years went on to college but where some students did not meet the technical standards of No Child Left Behind.

North Carolina education officials sent a letter to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan in August requesting a waiver of No Child Left Behind provisions.

State Superintendent June Atkinson wrote that North Carolina needs "greater flexibility for meeting the goal of improving schools within an accountability system that is both rigorous and fair."

A more formal application will be prepared now that the federal government's new system has been announced, but the August letter offered a framework of North Carolina's plan.

The state wants to focus its resources on the lowest-achieving schools -- those where less than 60 percent of students pass yearly exams. That would include the lowest 5 percent of schools in terms of student achievement.

Under No Child Left Behind, too many schools were classified as "in need of improvement," and the state's resources were spread too thinly, said Lou Fabrizio, the Department of Public Instruction's director of data, research and federal policy.

"Our intention is to really focus that intervention," Fabrizio said.

The state has already undertaken significant changes in education, such as adopting a new "common core" standard curriculum and including student performance as a measure in teacher and principal evaluations. North Carolina made some of the moves as it applied for, and won, a $400 million Race to the Top education grant from the federal government last year.

Other states made similar changes to compete for the big federal grants.

In a conference call Friday with reporters, Duncan said states already had led a quiet revolution from the No Child Left Behind era.

He praised states for "stunning courage, collaboration and creativity."

The federal government, he said, should get out of the way as states create their own systems of accountability.

But, he cautioned, the federal government is not interested in granting flexibility to states operating on a "business as usual" basis.

Duncan said states would be given about six weeks to apply for waivers.

The applications will undergo review, and the first waivers should be granted in December or January. Others can apply in February for review later.

State education officials say they have to figure out the nuts and bolts of their proposal, but they like North Carolina's odds.

"With all of the things that we're doing as a state, we should be in a good position to have our waiver request approved," Fabrizio said.

U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat, said in a statement Friday that she's glad North Carolina could get more flexibility, but said a waiver is no substitute for a rewrite of the law by Congress.

"We must come together, Democrats and Republicans, to reform our education laws and put our students first," Hagan's statement said.