Ehrlich on Washington column, September 7, 1997

NEWS FROM Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. Second Congressional District of Maryland 1407 York Road, Suite 304 Lutherville, Maryland 2 1 093 315 Cannon House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515 EHRLICH ON WASHINGTON Week of September 7, 1997 By Congressman Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. BETTER TEACHING, NOT TESTING, IS WHAT MATTERS Last week, members of Congress returned to Washington after a month of working in our districts. One of the first items on our agenda is halting another unwarranted, intrusive attempt by Washington bureaucrats to federalize our nation’s educational system. Earlier this year, President Clinton proposed two new national achievement tests — reading test for fourth graders, and a math test for eighth graders -- designed to assess the performance of individual students. Rather than seeking congressional approval for this fundamental change in federal education policy, the Department of Education has decided to go full steam ahead with these tests, and to start administering them in 1999 — all without specific or explicit congressional approval. Though the President and his Secretary of Education, Richard Riley, are convinced that these tests are a necessity, I disagree — and so do many of the nation’s governors, educators, legislators, and members of Congress of both parties. Here are our reasons why. First, the federal government already spends an enormous amount of money on educational testing — about $540 million in fiscal year 1997 alone. One such test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), already assesses the skills of fourth, eighth, and twelfth graders in reading, math, science, history, and other subjects by testing a representative