This is a statement by a group of conservative policy analysts, critiquing Republican efforts to rewrite No Child Left Behind. Their major complaint is that the current bills preserve federal control of education. They want states to make the decisions about when and how often students should be tested. They want the new law to say definitively that the federal government must not interfere with curriculum.
Being conservatives, they want Title I to be portable to promote school choice. They want to eliminate mandates and competitive grant programs.
Read it for yourself.
Arne Duncan seems to have united right and left in wanting to curtail the role of the federal government, though for different reasons. I want federal money to go to public schools. But I agree that the testing mandates and sanctions should be abandoned. When to test and how often to test should be a state function.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Its not right or left, it is one big mega party that deceives us into believing they are fundamentally different and they all work for the same exact boss. These guys debate each other on TV and attack each others characters and then go and dine together and laugh at how the public falls for it hook line and sinker.
“Pit Bulls”
We’re pitted against each other
Conservative v Lib
And brother versus brother
That bulls may kingly live
Yes sir! Just stated in different words than me but correct on all fronts.
Indiana has not been doing a very good job of deciding when and how often to test. The losers in this political game are our children. It is obvious that they are lab rats in the ever changing game of ‘is this test the right version?” Governor Pence is a Tea Party conservative.
This is part of an article which appeared recently in an article published in The Times of NW Indiana.
“INDIANAPOLIS | Gov. Mike Pence has hired a Michigan education consultant at $2,000 per day to recommend ways of reducing the extra-long duration of this year’s ISTEP-Plus standardized test — but the Department of Education doesn’t expect he’ll find many.
Edward Roeber has until Feb. 19 to review the exam and offer DOE suggestions for cutting the nearly 12 hours of scheduled testing to something closer to the six hours of ISTEP tests students in grades three through eight took last year.
“Hoosier families can be assured that we will shorten this test,” said Pence, a Republican.
Roeber is assessment director at the Michigan Assessment Consortium and managing partner at Assessment Solutions Group, a company that helps states pick standardized test vendors. He holds a doctorate in measurement and evaluation from the University of Michigan.
Indiana is set to pay him $10,000 for five days of work and $1,000 to travel from Michigan to Indianapolis to craft his initial recommendations, and another $11,000 to be available through December as the state prepares next year’s ISTEP exam.
“I appreciate his willingness to bring his expertise to the table and craft a solution to this issue in a way that will be less burdensome to Hoosier students and families while still maintaining accountability for schools,” Pence said…
DOE officials said Tuesday the longer-than-usual test duration is due to federal requirements that came along with Pence’s 2014 decision to scuttle Indiana’s adoption of Common Core educational standards and replace them with new state standards that Pence repeatedly has described as “uncommonly high.”
According to Assistant State Superintendent Danielle Shockey, the new Indiana standards required creation of a new test aligned to those standards, and since student scores on the new test no longer can be compared to the old ISTEP, extra questions are required this year to form a basis for measuring student growth as mandated by federal and state law.”
It is no surprise that there is money in the budget to pay this bloated “expert’s” fees to look at the tests? Way to waste yet more taxpayer dollars. And, isn’t Pence an eduwonk as well who is trying to silence and belittle Glenda Ritz? You can’t make this stuff up. Were I a taxpayer there I’d be angry.
“He holds a doctorate in measurement and evaluation . . . ”
All hail, a high priest of testology. Down on your knees you knaves.
Deciding when and how much to test should be a LOCAL, not a state decision. Let local schools pick a nationally normed test to use once a year to see how their students compare – WITHOUT high stakes attached – and leave it at that.
I received an excellent education in a small country school that prepared me well for college. We took the Iowa tests once a year in grade school but not after that. Our students competed well in various competitions and in college. Our schools used state adopted textbooks, met state accreditation and academic standards, and hired only licensed teachers – nearly all of whom were master degreed and tenured. They stayed with the school system for decades and really got to know and bond with local families.
Our parents didn’t need Big Brother to tell them to value education.
The Conservative support for public funds to go to vouchers, private schools and corporate Charters is weak when one looks at what this movement has done to fraud in education.
For instance, in 1999, there were six cases of education fraud listed by the DOE and four of the six were fraud cases based on student loans. From 1999 to 2014, there were 273 incidents of fraud convictions or settlements—but only 67 were based on student loan fraud.
It isn’t until 2004, that the first incidents of nonprofit and/or charter fraud are mentioned.
After 2004, Charter fraud is mentioned by the DOE 27 times for court cases. In fact, the variety of fraud crimes that the DOE reports increases annually as the corporate reform movement grows.
http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oig/ireports.html#Calendar Year 2014
“When to test and how often to test should be a state function.”
NO! Absolutely not! It should be the classroom teacher’s function.
Duane, I completely agree with you. What state has politicians reliable enough to make informed, intelligent, educated choices?
Classroom teachers are the experts and should be treated with the respect they have earned through years of working with students. Nobody else has acquired that ability.
Great article that would be greater if we left off the “labels”
Under eliminate mandates: eliminate Highly Qualified Teacher mandate – translation from eduspeak: TFA good; traditional teacher prep unnecessary.
Your post about Indiana’s new “accountability” plan whereby voucher schools are exempt from state-wide testing is a harbinger of things to come in state’s led by conservative governors who have control of the legislature. Somewhere Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand are smiling!