ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, February 27, 1997 TAG: 9702270017
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHESTER E. FINN JR. and DIANE RAVITCH
PRESIDENT Clinton's proposal for national testing makes sense. As former assistant secretaries of the Department of Education in the Reagan and Bush administrations, we urge Congress to support it.
When George Bush and Lamar Alexander suggested something similar, which they called American Achievement Tests, congressional Democrats scoffed, and no such bill was ever introduced.
And in 1992, when a bipartisan panel called the National Council on Education Standards and Testing recommended a form of national testing, a convoluted scheme that involved different tests based on common standards, the idea was ignored by congressional leaders and attacked by prominent educators.
Still, it was a good idea then, and it's a good one now.
In fact, Clinton's version of national testing is better than Bush's in these important respects: It doesn't require any new standards or tests to be devised, and it does not hinge on dubious efforts to attach multiple tests to uniform (nonexistent) standards.
The administration has figured out that the nation already has two excellent tests that measure student achievement in reading and math, the most basic of basic skills. Accordingly, the president has proposed that states and school districts be permitted to use a respected national test for fourth-grade reading and an equally admirable international test for eighth-grade mathematics.
Nobody is obliged to use these tests. The federal government will pay for the first round of testing, and after that it's up to states and districts.
They can, however, embed the national tests into their own testing programs, which virtually every jurisdiction has, and commercial publishers would be licensed to offer them, a welcome form of ``outsourcing'' that would hold down costs, bureaucracy and allegations of unfair government competition.
Most important, they're good tests, incorporating standards far more rigorous than those most states are now using.
The reading test is based on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which has been around almost three decades but has never been used by districts or schools to report the progress of individual students. The NAEP reading test is solid, multifaceted and has rigorous standards built into it.
For eighth-graders, the White House proposes to make available the math part of the Third International Math and Science Study, given to a half-million youngsters in 41 countries. The standards are built into the international comparisons. It's TIMSS results that enabled us to see that our eighth-graders perform poorly in mathematics compared with their peers in many other industrial countries.
Consider how powerful it will be for parents and teachers to compare the math prowess of their eighth-graders in, say, Phoenix or Minneapolis, to the performance of their peers in Korea and the Czech Republic. Consider the impact of parents in Denver or Boston actually seeing how well their fourth-graders read in relation to a national standard of proficiency.
According to every major poll, an overwhelming majority of the American people want national standards and tests. Until now, there has been no way for parents or public officials to get good information about how students are doing.
Instead, they've been stuck with college-entrance tests that are not representative of the full population and that, in any case, aren't even administered until the end of high school. Or they have had to settle for ``standardized'' tests that yield spurious results about youngsters being ``at or above grade level,'' even though ``grade level'' is simply a statistical average, not a true standard.
Only with such information in hand can parents make wise choices among schools; can parents and legislators appraise how well their school systems are doing; can teachers and principals determine how effective their efforts are, and take corrective action where needed.
To those worried about ``local control,'' we say that these tests are a yardstick, not a harness. They give the federal government no new powers.
The test results, in fact, will actually enhance local control by empowering consumers, policy-makers and professionals to know what actions need to be taken locally to improve education.
So important is national testing that it must be safeguarded from politicization, a temptation sure to arise if the student results are as bleak as everyone expects.
To prevent this possibility, responsibility for national testing should be removed from the federal Education Department (and congressional committees) and placed under the control of an independent, nonpartisan body. Such an entity, called the National Assessment Governing Board, already exists.
The White House's current plan to give control of national testing to the Department of Education would, we think, be a big mistake.
If Clinton will agree to turn the program for national testing into an autonomous agency, akin to the National Science Foundation (where the National Science Board sets policy) or the National Transportation Safety Board, then Congress should endorse this part of his education package. This proposal deserves their support.
Once upon a time it was even a Republican idea. Now it is a good American idea.
Chester E. Finn Jr. is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute; Diane Ravitch is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
- The Washington Post
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