New TPM Column: Don't Let States Leave Children Behind

The debate over reforming No Child Left Behind began again last week. And while it remains extremely unlikely that this Congress is ready to update the law, Sen. Lamar Alexander's (R-TN) draft bill has amplified the country's going conversation about the appropriate place of assessments in public education. The bill explores the possibility of eliminating annual math and reading assessments, which has ignited considerable opposition—especially from Democrats.

After a week of reflecting on current—and possible—federal assessment policy, I published this column today at Talking Points Memo:

Sure: tests aren’t fun. Especially standardized ones. And yes, there are reasons to take a measured approach to how we think about them and what we use them for. But in a country that has relatively piecemeal data on its schools and students, we need reliable benchmarks for measuring how we’re doing. We need data to guide our instructional choices and our policymaking, even if those data are imperfect. Data from those NCLB-mandated assessments illuminated enormous racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps in American schools. Eliminating them now would be akin to refusing to take regular blood tests after seeing a few rounds of worrying cholesterol counts. Conservatives ought to know that standardized, nationally-comparable achievement data is key for ensuring that taxpayer money is being spent well. But bring it up now, in the context of Alexander’s bill, and they call it “playing the race card.”

Click here to read it all!"