Does California’s New Testing Law Help or Hurt?
NOVEMBER 12, 2013
Is an obsolete test an appropriate accountability tool?
About a week ago, the San Francisco Chronicle published a guest editorial by George Miller – Congressman, NCLB architect, and a “hero” to Democrats for Education Reform – and Russlyn Ali, former Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights. I’ve met Ali briefly, after I spoke to commissioners of the U.S. Department of Education’s Equity and Excellence Commission. She’s done some fine work at the federal level, and has now left government to chair the Emerson Education Fund. While I can find plenty to admire in Ali’s overall commitment to education and civil rights, I disagree strongly with the main thrust of this editorial. In fact, I find it puzzling that a slight disruption in standardized testing has been met with such concern, as if California had abandoned a program that was working well, and wasn’t planning to resume massive amounts of testing in the near future.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (2011, photo by the author)
The trigger event was the passage of AB484, a bill that eliminated California’s existing standardized testing regimen a year before it was set to expire anyways, and set conditions to allow school districts a trial run with partial Common Core testing this year. The state’s decision creates a potential conflict with federal policy, and the