A quick look at what happened this week on WhiteHouse.gov:

All-hands-on-deck for Science and Innovation: Monday marked the second annual White House Science Fair, featuring research and inventions from more than 100 students representing 30 student teams. With marshmallows catapulting through the State Dining Room and robots roaming around the Blue Room, this celebration of research highlighted the talent of America’s next generation and their ability to change the world through science and engineering. If you missed President Obama’s historic launch of 14-year-old Joey Hudy’s marshmallow cannon, you can check it out here.

Housing Agreement: On Thursday morning, President Obama spoke about what he called a “landmark settlement”– an agreement with the nation’s five largest mortgage providers that will result in their issuing at least $25 billion to address mortgage loan servicing and foreclosure abuses. This settlement, in which “America’s biggest banks – banks that were rescued by taxpayer dollars – will be required to right these wrongs,” will aid thousands of working families now, and establish new protections for homeowners henceforward.

Kids Can’t Wait: From the East Room of the White House, the President announced that 10 states have agreed to implement impactful education reforms and will receive waivers from the burdensome mandates of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), also known as No Child Left Behind. These waivers will ensure that states have the flexibility necessary to raise student achievement standards, improve school accountability and increase teacher effectiveness.

Happy Second Birthday, Let’s Move!: There’s reason to celebrate – Thursday marked the Let’s Move! initiative’s second anniversary. Significant progress has been made to solve the problem of childhood obesity over the course of the past two years – President Obama signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act into law in December 2012; grocers including Walgreens, Supervalu and Walmart committed to build or expand 1,500 stores in food deserts; among many other accomplishments that are making a difference in the lives of our children.

President Barack Obama, with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius behind him, announces a new health care policy that requires a woman's insurance company to offer contraceptive care free of charge if the woman's religious employer objects to providing contraceptive services as part of its health plan coverage. The announcement was made in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House, Jan. 12, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Today, President Obama announced a policy that will accommodate religious freedom while making sure that women have access to preventive health care, including contraception, at no additional cost, no matter where they work.

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, most health insurance companies will cover women’s preventive care — services like well-woman visits, mammograms, immunizations, as well as contraception — without charging a co-pay or deductible beginning in August 2012.

Churches had already been exempted from providing employees with health care that covered contraception. The new policy announced today ensures that if a woman works for other types of religious employers with objections to providing contraceptive services as part of their health plan, the religious employer will not be required to provide, pay for or refer for contraception coverage.

Instead her insurance company will be required to directly offer her contraceptive care at no additional charge, as President Obama explained:

Under the rule, women will still have access to free preventive care that includes contraceptive services — no matter where they work.  So that core principle remains.  But if a woman’s employer is a charity or a hospital that has a religious objection to providing contraceptive services as part of their health plan, the insurance company — not the hospital, not the charity — will be required to reach out and offer the woman contraceptive care free of charge, without co-pays and without hassles. 

Hayley Hoverter met President Obama on Tuesday at the White House Science Fair, where she presented her product, “Sweet (dis)SOLVE", a new type of sugar packet that dissolves in hot water, February 7, 2012. (Photo courtesy NFTE)

Hayley Hoverter is an award-winning technology innovator, an entrepreneur, a CEO – and she’s also a 16-year-old high school student.  This week she met President Obama at the White House Science Fair, where she presented her product, “Sweet (dis)SOLVE.”  As the President explained:

“What impresses me so much is not just how smart you are, but it’s the fact that you recognize you’ve got a responsibility to use your talents in service of something bigger than yourselves.  Some of you, that means developing new products that will change the way we live.  Hayley Hoverter invented a new type of sugar packet that dissolves in hot water.  It’s flavorless, it’s colorless, and potentially could save up to 2 million pounds of trash each year -- and that’s just at Starbucks.”

This week, the President happily kicked off the Second Annual Science Fair at the White House and continued to call for an all-hands-on-deck approach to educating our kids in the fields of math, science, technology and engineering. He also spoke about putting our veterans back to work at Fire Station #5 in Arlington, announced a $25 billion agreement to help homeowners and hold big banks accountable, and unveiled yet another We Can't Wait initiative to encourage states to raise standards and reform schools.

President Barack Obama, with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, delivers remarks on education reform and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), also known as No Child Left Behind, in the East Room of the White House, Feb. 9, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Explaining that our kids can’t wait any long for Congress to act, President Barack Obama announced today that ten states that have agreed to implement bold education reforms will receive waivers from the burdensome mandates of the federal education law known as No Child Left Behind.  These waivers will give states the flexibility needed to raise student achievement standards, improve school accountability, and increase teacher effectiveness. The ten states approved for flexibility are Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. (UPDATE: An eleventh state, New Mexico, was also approved for a waiver shortly after the initial announcement).

So what does all this mean for our schools? What’s the problem with No Child Left Behind? What’s a waiver anyway, and why do states need flexibility? To answer these questions, we’ve put together a quick primer to help you understand the details behind today’s announcement.

What’s the deal with No Child Left Behind?

No Child Left Behind, the most current version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, was signed into law in 2001—and is five years overdue to be re-written by Congress. The law’s objective was admirable. It shined light on achievement gaps and increased accountability at the school level for high-need students. And there’s no question that setting goals and holding schools accountable for meeting them is central to an education system that prepares students to compete in a global, 21^st century economy.

As written, however, No Child Left Behind has serious flaws. In fact, some of the law’s requirements are actually stifling the kind of reforms we need to really improve student achievement, teacher effectiveness, and school accountability. For example, it determines whether schools are falling behind based on test scores. It imposes punitive labels and prescribes one-size-fits-all federal mandates for fixing failing schools.  It’s led states to narrow curriculum to focus more on teaching to the test and less on teaching everything else student need to know, and to lower standards to make them easier to meet

The Obama administration has worked extensively with Congress to re-write the law, and even submitted its own blueprint for education reform in March 2010, but legislators have not moved forward.

What are waivers and what do they have to do with No Child Left Behind?

Waivers provide an opportunity to fix what’s wrong with No Child Left Behind without waiting any longer for Congress to Act. States receiving waivers are given flexibility that exempts them from meeting the law’s most troublesome and restrictive requirements in exchange for setting their own higher, more honest standards for student success.

The Federal Government and 49 state attorneys general reached a landmark settlement with the nation’s five largest mortgage servicers that will provide $20 billion to help struggling homeowners.

The full $25 billion settlement, the largest ever of its kind, is the result of a joint effort between federal law enforcement and the states to investigate the abusive and irresponsible mortgage industry practices that led to the collapse of the housing market and cost more than 4 million American families their homes due to foreclosure.

These millions of families millions of Americans did the right thing and the responsible thing -- shopped for a house, secured a mortgage that they could afford, made their payments on time – lost their homes and their nest eggs due to the irresponsible actions of others:  by lenders who sold loans to people who couldn’t afford them; by speculators who were looking to make a quick buck; by banks that took risky mortgages, packaged them up, and traded them off for large profits; by companies that used fake signatures and shortcuts  to process foreclosures more quickly, sometimes on houses that hadn’t been verified as legitimate foreclosure cases to begin with.

These practices were plainly irresponsible, and President Obama refused to let them go unanswered. Under the terms of this settlement, America’s biggest banks -- banks that were rescued by taxpayer dollars -- will be required to right these wrongs.  That means more than just paying a fee. 

Yesterday, the White House hosted a live video chat with Dr. Rajiv Shah, Administrator, U.S. Agency for International Development, Gayle Smith, Special Assistant to the President & Senior Director of the National Security Council and Tom Kalil, Deputy Director for Policy, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy & Senior Advisor for Science, Technology, and Innovation, National Economic Council.  They answered questions from Whitehouse.gov, Twitter and Facebook on the role of science, technology and innovation in global development. The conversation covered the importance of innovation in foreign aid in the current budget environment, the role of partnerships with universities both domestic and abroad, and how innovation can aid our food security programs all around the world.

Watch the full video and be sure to follow @Whitehouse and @WHLive on Twitter for more opportunities to engage with us. 

Vice President Joe Biden speaks to Florida State University students about college affordability, February 6, 2012. (Official White House Photo by David Lienemann)

The Vice President visited Florida State University on Monday to talk with students about our comprehensive plan to address rising college costs. The Vice President began by calling on Congress to permanently extend the $2,500 per year American Opportunity Tax Credit for tuition and other expenses, double the number of work-study jobs over the next five years, and help 7.4 million borrowers by stopping the interest rates on federal student loans from doubling later this year.

These proposals are important, but increasing federal aid is only part of the solution. States and universities also share some responsibility for reining in costs. The Vice President detailed our plan to steer federal campus-based aid to schools that keep tuition affordable – and away from schools that don’t.   While we plan to significantly increase the availability of campus-based aid by offering more Perkins loans to needy students and creating more work-study slots, the additional dollars will only flow to colleges that are providing good value to their students.

We are also proposing to create a new “Race to the Top” for college affordability and completion. This competitive grant program will encourage states to reform their higher education systems in ways that lower costs and increase completion rates. And because state funding cuts are one of the primary drivers of tuition increases at public universities, any state that wants a grant will have to promise not to slash funding for higher education.

You can learn more about our plan here.

President Barack Obama hosts the second White House Science Fair celebrating the student winners of a broad range of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) competitions from across the country. The President viewed the work of Presidio, Texas, students Janet Nieto and Ana Karen, of Presidio High School's Rocketry Team, and 7th grade student Gwynelle Condino, of Lucy Franco Middle School, in the Red Room of the White House, Feb. 7, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

Driving around Texas, where I moved to study chemistry in graduate school, there was a bumper sticker I’d often see slapped onto the trucks of transplants like myself: “I wasn’t born in Texas, but I got here as fast as I could.” I was reminded of this aspirational slogan Tuesday at the White House Science Fair, where student teams from two towns in Texas were invited for the hard work and creativity they’ve applied to scientific and engineering problems—talents that will help them speed to whatever life and career they dream for themselves as fast as they can.