WASHINGTON -- The Senate began its most serious attempt in years to rewrite the country's main education law with a hearing Wednesday focusing on an issue that has led to debate nationwide: whether states should be required to test students every year.
An overflow crowd listened as witnesses described standardized testing as helpful or harmful to learning, and lawmakers grappled with how much control the federal government should exercise over the nation's 100,000 public schools.
The education law, known as No Child Left Behind Act, expanded the federal role in public education in 2002. The law emphasized accountability, requiring schools for the first time to test students annually in math and reading in grades three through eight and once in high school. It also required states to make scores public for groups including racial minorities and the poor.
The data revealed gaps in academic performance between racial groups and put pressure on states to address them. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the ranking Democrat on the panel, credits annual testing with a slight decline in the achievement gap.
Civil-rights advocates say the transparency that came with testing was the most valuable contribution of the law.
In recent days, 20 civil-rights groups have pressed to keep annual testing. The Obama administration also wants to keep annual testing.
Under the law, schools that failed to improve their test scores faced sanctions. The Obama administration increased that pressure, encouraging states to use test scores to judge not only schools but also teacher performance.
States and school districts then began adding interim tests during the school year, to measure whether schools were on track to pass the end-of-year test.
"Are there too many tests? Are they the right tests? Are the stakes for failing them too high? What should Washington, D.C., have to do with all this? " asked Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
The tests have resulted in unintended consequences that have narrowed curricula and turned the learning experience into drudgery, critics said.
"I'm embarrassed to say I am a teacher who every May would get up and apologize to my students," testified Stephen Lazar, who teaches U.S. history and English at Harvest Collegiate High School in New York City. "I told my students there would be no more research, no more discussion, no more dealing with complexity, no more developing as writers with voice and style. Instead, they would repeatedly write stock, formulaic essays and practice mindless repetition of facts."
A Section on 01/22/2015