Mr. President, this month millions of American schoolchildren are returning to classrooms to begin the new school year, making this a time of hope and possibilities. Students in my state of Wisconsin and around the country are meeting new teachers, getting reacquainted with old friends, joining clubs or athletic teams, and embarking on the next step in their educational careers. Teachers and administrators around the country are starting a new school year with fresh lesson plans and high goals for the all the students in their schools. And many educators, parents, and school officials are continuing to work diligently toward the goal of closing the achievement gap that continues to exist throughout many communities across the country.
These students, teachers, and administrators will also face their sixth year under the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the centerpiece of President Bush’s domestic agenda. NCLB, which is the 2001-02 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), requires that students be tested annually in reading and math, and starting this school year, in science. The law is up for reauthorization this year and it remains unknown how much change students, teachers, parents, and administrators can expect as Congress works to reauthorize the law.
I voted against No Child Left Behind in 2001 in large part because of the law’s new federal testing mandate. The comments that I heard from Wisconsinites during the 2001 debate and that I continue to hear six years later have been almost universally negative. While Wisconsinites support holding their schools accountable for results and closing the achievement gap, they are concerned about the federal law’s primary focus on standardized testing.
Mr. President, let me make clear at the outset that this country has a long way to go toward ensuring that all students, regardless of their backgrounds, have a chance to get a good education. I remain troubled by the inequality in funding and resources provided to our nation’s schools and by the persistent segregation that schools around the country, including those in Wisconsin, continue to face. Moreover, I am deeply concerned that NCLB’s testing and sanctions approach has forced some schools, particularly those in our inner cities and rural areas, to become places where students are not taught, but are drilled with workbooks and testing taking strategies, while in wealthy suburban schools, these tests do not greatly impact school curriculums rich in social studies, civics, arts, music, and other important subjects.
All levels of government, local, state, and federal, need to act to ensure that equal educational opportunities are afforded to every student in our country.
I do not necessarily oppose the use of standardized testing in our nation’s schools. I agree that some tests are needed to ensure that our children are keeping pace and that schools, districts, and states are held accountable for closing the persistent achievement gap that continues to exist among different groups of students, including among students in Wisconsin. But the federal one-size-fits-all testing and punishment approach that NCLB takes is not providing an equal education for all, eradicating the achievement gap that exists in our country or ensuring that each student reaches his or her full potential.
Rather, the reauthorized ESEA needs to recognize that states and local communities have the primary responsibility for providing a good public education to our students. The reauthorized ESEA should also encourage states and local districts to pursue innovative reform efforts including utilizing more robust accountability systems that can measure student academic growth from year to year and measure student academic growth using multiple forms of assessment, rather than just standardized tests.
Today, I am introducing the Improving Student Testing Act to overhaul the federal testing mandate and provide states and local districts flexibility to determine the frequency and use of standardized testing in their accountability systems. My legislation is fully offset, while providing approximately $200 million in deficit reduction over the next five years.
Nothing in my legislation would force states to alter their accountability systems in recognition of the fact that different states are at different stages of their education reform efforts and may wish to maintain their current assessment systems. However, my legislation says that for federal accountability purposes, states can choose to test once in grades 3-5, 6-9, and 10-12 rather than the current federal requirement for annual testing in grades 3-8 and once in high school.
For states that choose to test in grade spans instead of annually, my legislation encourages them to use more than high-stakes standardized tests in their accountability systems. By removing the federal requirement to test annually, Congress can encourage states and local districts to lead innovative school reform efforts, including developing more robust assessment systems that use a range of academic assessments, such as valid and reliable performance-based assessments, formative assessments that provide meaningful and timely feedback to both students and teachers, and portfolio assessments that allow students to accumulate a broad range of student work and assess their own learning as they progress through school.
I have heard from a number of teachers and administrators who are concerned about the testing burden NCLB imposed on our nation’s educational system. The federal mandate to test annually has strapped state and local districts’ financial resources. Congress promised states specific funding levels for Title I, Part A in NCLB, but Congress has failed to live up to those promised resources every year since NCLB was enacted. Despite the lack of adequate resources, our schools continue to be forced to test and to ratchet up the consequences associated with these tests.
NCLB’s testing mandates have also led to a substantial demand for increased numbers of standardized tests and I have heard from some Wisconsinites concerned that the testing industry cannot keep up with this demand. There have been stories coming in from around the country documenting the burden faced by the testing industry, including incorrectly scored tests, test scores arriving much later than expected, and schools given incorrect testing booklets and supplies by the testing companies.
My legislation would help alleviate this testing burden by providing states with the option to reduce the number of grades tested for federal accountability purposes. States would then be able to dedicate more of their critical Title I dollars toward efforts that will help close the achievement gap including improving teacher quality through professional development and providing more targeted instruction to disadvantaged students in critical subject areas.
Some may say that with a federal requirement to test in grade spans and not every year, the students in the non-tested years will be ignored. I have more faith in Wisconsin’s teachers and other dedicated teachers around the country than to assume that because there is no external, federally required test, teachers will not teach their kids or ensure that their students make academic progress. Effective schools contain teachers who work collaboratively within grade levels and across grades to raise the academic achievement of every student. Good teachers know that they are responsible for ensuring all their students make substantial academic progress in a given year regardless of whether those students must take a federally imposed standardized test.
My legislation also provides states with the flexibility and resources to develop high quality assessments that can be used to give a more accurate picture of student achievement. I have heard a number of criticisms of the standardized tests used in Wisconsin and around the country – namely that they may not measure higher order thinking skills and that the results are returned to teachers too late in the school year, preventing teachers from receiving feedback that could help inform their instructional techniques to increase student learning. It is important that Congress listen to the feedback provided by teachers and administrators from around the country and provide states and local districts with the flexibility to develop and use other types of assessments in their accountability systems.
Mr. President, my bill authorizes a competitive grant program to help states and local districts develop multiple forms of high quality assessments including formative assessments, performance based assessments, and portfolio assessments. These assessments can give a more accurate and detailed picture of student achievement than a single standardized test. These assessments can also be designed to provide more immediate feedback to teachers and students than the statewide standardized tests used for federal accountability purposes. By incorporating these richer assessments, teachers can better assess student learning throughout the school year and continuously modify their instruction to ensure all students continue to learn.
These high quality, multiple measures can be more expensive for states to develop and my bill recognizes that cost by authorizing a competitive grant program to assist states in developing these assessments. States and local districts can use these funds for a variety of purposes, including training teachers in how to use these assessments, creating the assessments, aligning the assessments with state standards, and collaborating with other states to share information about assessment creation.
My legislation makes clear that these funds are not to be used for the purchase of additional test preparation materials. I have long been concerned that NCLB could result in a generation of students who know how to take tests, but who do not have the skills necessary to become successful adults. This grant program will help innovative states develop higher quality assessments to better ensure that the students in their state are prepared for careers in the twenty-first century, including the ability to think critically, analyze new situations, and work collaboratively with others.
My legislation also makes clear that these multiple forms of assessment are not a loophole for states and local districts to avoid accountability. Rather, my legislation recognizes that these multiple measures can provide a more accurate and more complete picture of student achievement. My legislation makes clear that these assessments must: be aligned with states’ academic and content standards, be peer reviewed by the federal Department of Education, produce timely evidence about student learning and achievement, and provide teachers with meaningful feedback so that teachers can modify and improve their classroom instruction to address specific student needs.
Congress also needs to reform NCLB’s accountability provisions during the reauthorization process, including providing credit to schools that demonstrate their students have made substantial growth from year to year. Right now, NCLB measures students’ achievement based primarily on reading and math tests and students either achieve the cut score on the NCLB tests or they do not. A number of teachers and parents in Wisconsin have expressed concern that NCLB’s current approach leads schools to focus on students who are closest to achieving the cut score on tests so as to continue to boost the number of kids passing the test each year. As a result, parents and teachers are concerned that the lowest-achieving students who are not yet proficient and the highest-performing students who are already proficient may be ignored in the effort to meet AYP each year.
My legislation seeks to address this concern by providing flexibility for states that maintain annual testing to develop accountability models capable of tracking student growth from year to year to better ensure that every student, regardless of his or her current academic level, continues to make academic progress. States seeking to use growth models in their accountability systems would have to prove that such growth models meet a number of minimum technical requirements, including ensuring the growth model: is of sufficient technical capacity to function fairly and accurately for all students, uses valid, reliable, and accurate measures, has a statewide privacy-protected data system capable of tracking student growth, does not set performance measures based on a student’s background, and is capable of tracking student progress in at least reading and math. I am pleased there is substantial agreement in Congress that growth models should be part of a reauthorized ESEA and I will work with my colleagues to ensure that any growth models included in the ESEA can be fairly implemented and are flexible enough for states and local districts to utilize in their accountability systems.
NCLB set the ambitious goal that all children will be proficient on state reading and math tests by the year 2014. I have heard from a number of educators and administrators in Wisconsin and around the country who are concerned that very few states will be able to meet NCLB’s 2014 deadline. I understand their concern, particularly in light of the fact that Congress has failed to provide the promised financial resources to meet NCLB’s mandates. Our nation needs to have high academic expectations for all of our students, but if Congress is going to set such ambitious goals our schools to meet, we need to provide our schools with the resources to meet those goals.
So far, the federal government has not lived up to the funding promises it made when Congress passed NCLB in late 2001. The appropriated levels for Title I, Part A have failed to match the authorized levels for Title I, Part A every year from 2002-2007 resulting in an underfunding of Title I, Part A by over $40 billion since 2002. It is one thing to set ambitious targets for our nation’s schools with adequate resources provided to reach those targets. It is something entirely different to hold our schools accountable for ensuring all students are proficient by 2014 and providing our schools with less resources than were promised to them when NCLB passed. My legislation includes a funding trigger that will waive the 2014 deadline unless Congress fully funds Title I, Part A from now until 2014. If Congress maintains the 2014 deadline and does not provide additional resources to our nation’s schools, we are only setting our schools up for further failure as we approach 2014.
Mr. President, my legislation also reforms the peer review provisions of NCLB to ensure that there is more transparency and consistency in the peer review process. States are currently required to submit their state plans for approval by the Department of Education and I have heard a number of concerns from my state and others that states do not receive consistent or timely information from the Department of Education during peer review. States have also voiced concern about their inability to speak directly with peer reviewers during the peer review process in order to clarify reviewers’ comments made about their state plans.
My bill would amend the peer review language to ensure that the peer review teams contain balanced representation from state education agencies, local education agencies, and practicing educators. My legislation also includes language that requires the Secretary to provide consistency in peer review decisions among the states and requires the Department’s Inspector General to conduct independent evaluations every two years to ensure consistency of approval and denial decisions by the Department of Education from state to state. My bill would also require the Secretary to ensure that states are given the opportunity to receive timely feedback from peer review teams as well as directly interact with peer review panels on issues that need clarification during the peer review process.
Mr. President, despite my concerns regarding the testing provisions of NCLB, there are other provisions of the law that I continue to support. I have consistently heard from educators and other interested parties in my state of Wisconsin in favor of NCLB’s requirement to disaggregate data by specific groups of children, including students from major racial and ethnic groups, students with disabilities, economically disadvantaged students, and English language learners. Teachers have told me that these provisions have added more transparency to school data and help to ensure that schools continue to remain focused on closing the achievement gap among these various groups of students and remain attentive to the academic needs of all students. My legislation builds on the requirement to disaggregate data by also requiring states to disaggregate high school graduation rates on the state report cards required under NCLB.
Justice Louis Brandeis once said, “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants,” and I think his statement can be properly applied to NCLB’s requirement to disaggregate and report academic data by student subgroups. Information about the achievement gaps that exist throughout our nation’s schools, whether they are gaps in academic achievement or graduation rates, can help parents, educators, local school board members and others continue to advocate for education reform at the local level. Some states already have the ability to disaggregate graduation rates by NCLB’s subgroups and my legislation provides funding to all states to comply with this public reporting requirement.
Tracking students’ achievement and disaggregating student data are fundamental components of No Child Left Behind and require states to maintain large data systems containing detailed information about students. The bill that I am introducing will also ensure that these data systems are maintained in a way that safeguards individual privacy. Use of the data by educational entities, as well as disclosures of student-level data to third parties, will be carefully limited, and individuals will have a right to know who is inspecting their information and for what purpose.
My legislation also provides additional funding for states to build additional infrastructure at the state and local level in order to improve their educational accountability systems. States and local districts will have to secure additional resources in order to implement growth models or utilize multiple forms of assessment in their accountability systems. My bill creates a competitive and flexible grant program to help ensure the federal government does its part in assisting states in accessing these resources.
States have varying capacity needs and funds under this program can help states build their privacy-protected educational databases, train individuals in how to use multiple measures of student achievement in state accountability systems, and provide additional professional development opportunities for both state education agency and local education agency staff members. I have heard from a number of state and local administrators who are trying diligently to reconcile increased federal and state mandates with less financial resources. Providing additional resources will help build state and local educational infrastructure and will help encourage states to move to accountability systems that can measure student growth and use more than standardized test scores when making decisions about students and schools.
There are a number of other issues that we need to address in the NCLB reauthorization. My bill seeks to address some of the top concerns I have heard about from constituents around the state related to testing. During the reauthorization process, we need to examine and modify NCLB sanctions structure to address implementation problems that rural and large urban districts have faced. We also need to recognize that every school and every school district is different and the rigid sanctions of NCLB may not allow states and local districts the opportunity to implement a variety of other innovative school reform efforts.
We also need to address the diverse learning needs of students with disabilities and English language learners. We need to ensure that NCLB works in concert with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and that students with disabilities are provided with proper modifications on assessments without holding lower academic expectations for these students. I have long supported full funding for IDEA and strongly support high academic expectations for students with disabilities. I was disappointed the final NCLB conference report in 2001 dropped the Senate language on full funding of the federal share of IDEA and I hope we can be successful during this reauthorization process in efforts to fully fund IDEA.
The number of English language learners is growing around the country, including in my state of Wisconsin. I have heard concerns from educators around Wisconsin that NCLB does not properly address the unique learning needs of English language learners. Teachers are concerned about the lack of valid and reliable assessments for English language learners and the unfairness of testing these students when they may not yet have learned English well enough to take standardized tests in English. During the reauthorization, we need to ensure that additional resources are provided to develop valid and reliable assessments for English language learners so that these students are fairly assessed while learning the English language.
There are many issues that need to be addressed during the reauthorization process and my bill seeks to address some of the issues related to testing under NCLB. I am pleased this bill is cosponsored by my friend and colleague, Senator Patrick Leahy, and that it has the support of the American Association of School Administrators, the National Education Association, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, the School Social Work Association of America, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association, the Wisconsin National Board Network of Wisconsin National Board Certified Teachers, and the Wisconsin School Administrator’s Alliance, which includes the Association of Wisconsin School Administrators, the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators, the Wisconsin Association of School Business Officials, and the Wisconsin Council of Administrators of Special Services.
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 is the key federal law impacting our nation’s schools and I have long supported the law’s commitment to improving the quality of education provided to our nation’s most disadvantaged students. I strongly support holding schools accountable for both providing equal educational opportunities to all our students and for continuing to work to close the achievement gaps that exist in our nation’s schools.
I also strongly support ensuring that classroom teachers, local school districts, and states have the primary responsibility for making decisions regarding day-to-day classroom instruction. Unfortunately, under NCLB, too much of the activity in classrooms is being dictated by the federal one-size-fits-all testing mandates and accountability provisions. The federal government should leave decisions about the frequency of standardized testing up to the states and local school districts that bear the responsibility for educating our children. While standardized testing does have a role to play in measuring and improving student achievement, one high-stakes test alone cannot accurately or responsibly measure our students or our schools.
NCLB was based on a flawed premise – that the way to hold schools accountable and close the achievement gap was for the federal government to pile on more tests and use the tests as the primary tool to evaluate schools. Now, five years into the law’s implementation, we have evidence showing the need to reduce NCLB’s burden on schools, by providing real support for students and teachers and by providing flexibility to states to use more than standardized tests to measure the achievement of students. This country has a long way to go before the opportunity for an equal education is afforded to all of America’s students and Congress can take a step toward helping to ensure that opportunity by substantially reforming the mandates of NCLB. It is time to fix No Child Left Behind, and to get back to learning – not just testing – in all of our nation’s public schools.
