Education Secretary Says Administration Is Committed to Testing
By MOTOKO RICHJAN. 12, 2015
With debates about the appropriate role for the federal government in public education increasingly polarized, the secretary of education, Arne Duncan, insisted on Monday that the administration would not back away from annual testing for students and performance evaluations of teachers based in part on the results of the tests.
In a speech on Monday to outline the administration’s priorities for a revision of No Child Left Behind, the signature Bush-era education law, Mr. Duncan said that “parents, teachers and students have both the right and the need to know how much progress all students are making each year towards college- and career-readiness.”
Annual testing has become a point of contention in the often-bitter discussions about how best to improve public education.
In July, the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers’ union, called for an end to mandated yearly testing, and a growing group of parents and educators has been pushing back against what they see as rampant testing and test preparation.
In August, Mr. Duncan said that testing issues were “sucking the oxygen out of the room in a lot of schools” and allowed states to delay using test scores in teacher evaluations.
The requirement that schools test students every year in reading and math between third and eighth grade and once in high school was enshrined in the No Child Left Behind Act. The tests were intended as a way for schools to see whether all student groups, but particularly minorities and poor students, were being taught adequately.
That law, which governs how $23.3 billion in federal education funding is spent and was passed with bipartisan fanfare in 2001, has been up for reauthorization since 2007. So far, Congress has been unable to agree on a new version. The House passed a bill in 2013, but the Senate version did not make it out of the Education Committee.
In a telephone interview Sunday night, Mr. Duncan said the primary purpose of the education law was to guarantee that public school students all have a chance at educational and economic mobility.
“Is this simply a good idea for some or is it important for all?” he said. “I don’t think any of us should feel comfortable if we’re going to just do Education Secretary Says Administration Is Committed to Testing - NYTimes.com:
