Too much testing

State Education Commissioner Duke Albanese was respectful but blunt in an op-ed commentary yesterday about the problem of annual testing in President Bush’s education proposal. If Maine’s congressional delegation doesn’t hear that message, they and other members of Congress are bound to get a similar one now that a group representing 7,000 state lawmakers has publicized its concerns.

Mr. Albanese objects to the annual testing of all students in grades 3 through 8. “The requirement risks putting testing above results,” he wrote, “upsetting Maine’s own statewide reform efforts, while violating our traditions of local control and academic freedom.” Maine currently uses the Maine Educational Assessment to test students in fourth, eighth and 11th grades

The National Conference of State Legislatures goes several steps further in its critique of the president’s education plan. The organization told Congress this week that the annual testing component is a costly and counterproductive requirement. Specifically, it argues that many states already have successful testing systems that would have to be altered if the bill is approved; that the bill passes along an unfunded mandate – the Senate version would cost $880 million over three years, but the bill would provide only $370 million to states; that the standards are unattainable by 90 percent of students; and that the bill requires states to have a certified teacher in every classroom within three years, even as states estimate they will need to hire 2 million new teachers in the next decade. For good measure, NCSL adds that Congress continues to underfund special education.

Maine gets excellent results from its school systems and the Learning Results, as measured through the MEA, promise more improvements. Its scores on the National Assessment of Progress tests place it among the best in the country for reading and math. These achievements, however, require a lot of work by teachers and students. The MEAs take a couple of weeks a year to administer. Adding them to five more grades, as proposed by the education bill, is the equivalent of taking away more than two months of classroom time without teaching students anything except to despise the MEAs.

Only one state among the top 10 scorers on the national tests requires students to undergo annual testing, so it is hard to see a correlation between the amount of testing done and the results. Congress, for the relatively small amount it spends on education, should focus on the results that states get and worry less about demanding unneeded tests along the way.