House OKs education bill delaying national tests

WASHINGTON — President Clinton’s plan to test students nationwide on their reading and math skills “is dead for a year” under a major concession by the White House to House Republicans.

On a 352-65 vote Friday night, the House passed an $80.2 billion spending bill for the Education, Health and Human Services and Labor departments with language that will delay until 2000 at the earliest the tests that Clinton wanted to give to fourth and eighth graders in 1999.

Maine Reps. John Baldacci and Tom Allen voted for the bill.

The bill goes to the Senate, where a vote was expected as early as Saturday. It includes spending increases this year and in most of 1998 for student financial aid, medical research and Head Start. Senate approval was expected.

“President Clinton’s plan for new national tests is dead for a year,” said Rep. William Goodling, chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee and a leading opponent of the testing plan.

A dispute between the House and the administration over the voluntary tests had delayed passage of the bill, which covers the budget year that started Oct. 1. The agreement lets work continue on developing the tests and calls for an independent study of whether an array of existing state and commercial tests may do the work of a federally sponsored version.

The deal practically guarantees that the issue will be before Congress again next year.

“By this time next year the case for voluntary national tests will be even clearer, opposition to them will seem even more shortsighted and the call from parents and communities for a rigorous, comparable measure of educational achievement will be even louder,” said Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.

Clinton has argued that the tests of fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade math skills are needed because there is no uniform measure, based on uniform standards, that let parents know how their individual children and schools are performing.

Many opponents argued that the tests were duplicating state efforts to impose standards and test students on them. Others argued that the tests would lead to federal control of what is taught.

“This is an important victory in our fight to save local control of our schools from a Washington takeover,” said Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo., who had threatened a filibuster if testing were to go forward.

Blacks and Hispanics argued that the tests could be used to discriminate against students from poor families and schools or pupils with limited English.