Tempers have flared in states like Florida and Virginia over new academic goals that are being set in states with waivers under the No Child Left Behind Act. As allowed by the U.S. Department of Education, some states set goals that vary by race—with the aim being that minorities and other at-risk students must make faster progress. I wrote about this tricky topic for Education Week, and then the New York Times followed suit.

The issue is front and center again tonight as NBC Nightly News is set to air a story filmed in the District of Columbia that seeks to illuminate this issue. It’s a very tough topic with a lot of nuance that may be difficult to convey in a short broadcast segment, so there’s more information online as part of the network’s Education Nation project.

The folks at NBC tried to do what I thought was almost impossible: create an interactive map that seeks to boil down what the new academic goals look like by state. Given how complicated and sometimes unreadable states’ waiver applications are, this was a tremendous undertaking. Check it out: