[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 118 (Tuesday, September 9, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8944-S8945]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




[[Page S8944]]



                      NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL TESTING

  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I want to say to the Senator from North 
Dakota that I have listened with great care to his remarks and with a 
strong degree of sympathy and support for all that he has to say. I do 
want to add two cautions or questions that I know he will consider very 
thoughtfully in this connection, however.
  I am here on the floor to speak to an amendment I introduced last 
night that would take dozens, perhaps hundreds, of categoric programs 
for education and consolidate them and distribute them on a formula 
basis to each school district, with a firm belief that our school board 
members and teachers in various schools throughout the country can make 
a better determination as to how to use that money than can bureaucrats 
here in Washington, DC.

  But a part of my talk in a few moments will relate to this very 
question of achievement. I agree with the Senator from North Dakota, 
but the two caveats I have are these. Will we have a set of national 
standards or national tests that truly measure learning, knowledge, as 
we wish it to be?
  There is great suspicion that anything sponsored by the Federal 
Department of Education will be of questionable validity in the real 
world in showing where our students are. And will a set of national 
tests drive out more sophisticated and better quality State and/or 
local tests? Will school districts and State superintendents of public 
instruction across the country say, fine, we have these national tests 
now, we don't need to do anything other than to teach to those tests--
the very modest one subject in fourth grade and one subject in eighth 
grade?
  I say that because, in preparing for my other comments, I have here 
the results of the first experimental year of a new set of tests given 
in the State of Washington to a wide number of students in more than 
250 school districts and some private schools throughout the State. 
Now, these tests are far more sophisticated and far deeper than 
anything we are talking about here on a national level. Starting in the 
fourth grade but to be extended up to the tenth grade in the future, 
students were tested in listening, reading, writing, and mathematics. 
In other words, four sets of tests, rather than the one called for in 
the President's proposal.
  Moreover, they were tested for their actual mastery of the subjects, 
rather than just on some sliding scale: Are you in the fiftieth 
percentile of all the people who took the test, either in the State or 
across the country? The State of Washington does use the current 
national tests in some of these areas, which are simply true, false, or 
a fill-in-the-blank-with-a-pencil kind of test. These new tests, 
however, in a number of the areas, include essay examinations as well 
as true, false, or multiple choice tests.
  This is what some of the national organizations or experts have to 
say about this. I am quoting from last Thursday's Seattle Times.

       Washington's new test gets high marks from experts familiar 
     with similar assessments in other States. Most say it will 
     take time for students to meet the new standard and that 
     these kinds of tests, called performance-based assessments, 
     are more demanding than the fill-in-the-bubbles tests most 
     parents and students are used to.
       The problem with standardized tests is that they hold 
     schools accountable not for how students do in relation to a 
     fixed standard, but rather in relation to how other students 
     do --``a fuzzy concept,'' said Dr. Philip Daro of the New 
     Standards Project, a consortium of States and urban districts 
     creating education-reform models.
       ``Performance-based tests are more realistic, more 
     practical, more like people evaluated in the workplace,'' 
     Daro said.
       The American Federation of Teachers said Washington's 
     standards in English and science meet its criteria for being 
     strong, coherent and useful to teachers and parents. The 
     State's math standards are borderline and its social-studies 
     standards are considered below par, with too little attention 
     given to that history.

  Under those consensuses, one of the reasons for the criticism of 
mathematics is that even in the Washington State tests, among students 
who rank very high in National College Board examinations and the like, 
you can get a perfect score in the fourth grade mathematics test even 
though you have the wrong answer. Some of the SAT questions give a 
perfect score in this test if you get the reasoning right even if you 
come up with the wrong answer. That is not going to please the real 
world, or a potential employer is not going to be comforted by having 
an employee who may think logically but reaches the wrong answer in a 
mathematical computation.
  Given that, however, Mr. President, it is breathtaking and 
disappointing to report that in these four areas 62 percent of the 
fourth graders who took the test in my State exceeded the standard for 
listening, 48 percent for reading, 32 percent for writing, and 22 
percent for mathematics even with the possibility of getting a perfect 
score on some of the tests on some of the questions in the test without 
getting the right answer. Twenty-six percent of our fourth grade 
students flunked all four, or failed to meet the standard in all four, 
and only 14 percent met the standards in all four.
  I was very disturbed by the fact that our State superintendent of 
public instruction, who is new, and, may I say, said, ``We must not be 
discouraged by results of the assessment, or try to hammer children and 
teachers.'' I think we should be discouraged by those results. I don't 
think we should hammer children and teachers. And I will speak in a few 
minutes on the proposition that I think they ought to get more direct 
aid from ourselves, and fewer bureaucrats telling them what to do and 
how to do it. But these are very disappointing results.
  I guess my fear and my only reservation is about the remark on 
national standards, with which in theory I certainly agree, in 
connection with the talk by the Senator from North Dakota is that I 
would hate to see a set of national standards that we work down to 
rather than up from.
  The same article said that only one State, Iowa, is not engaged in 
some kind of testing at the present time.
  So my real question on this is how do we see to it that a set of so-
called ``national standards'' don't end up depreciating, or making less 
demanding, the requirement to meet certain standards that many States 
have now and others like my own are moving toward with great rapidity?
  I simply have that as a question.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, will the Senator from Washington yield for 
a question?
  Mr. GORTON. He certainly would.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, before I ask the question, I say I think 
the remarks by Senator Gorton are important and raise the right 
question.
  I would not suggest that we have some sort of aspiration for national 
testing that would in any way lower standards. We need to raise 
standards. It seems to me that the proposals that have been advanced, 
for example, with respect to the reading at the fourth grade level is 
one of these gateway activities. If you do not get through that fourth 
grade level and are able to read and go beyond, and you are beyond that 
and aren't able to read sufficiently, nothing else will come together 
in your educational career. That is the problem. That is why you need 
to measure on some of these gateway activities like reading at the 
fourth grade level and mathematics at the eighth grade level.
  The Senator from the State of Washington made a couple of important 
points. There are some good testing activities going on in some States. 
Some are terribly deficient. It is important to understand that, 
whether it is the National Chamber of Commerce, the Business 
Roundtable, or the technology firms in our country who are asking for 
this and who believe this is an essential part of understanding what we 
are getting from our educational system and how to fix it. They feel 
that we have a significant problem. And, in order to fix that problem, 
you need to figure out where you are, and where you go from that point 
to fix it. I share that feeling.

  I say to the Senator from Washington that the points he made are 
accurate. Isn't it the case, however, that we should be able to 
recognize the concern some people have about who would do the testing, 
or what kind of testing would be done? Shouldn't we be able to overcome 
those concerns by saying at least we aspire as a Nation to achieve some 
goals with respect to our children who are in the fourth grade and the 
eighth grade, and with respect to their meeting the mathematics skills? 
Shouldn't we be able to meet the concerns that the Senator from 
Washington expresses?

[[Page S8945]]

  Mr. GORTON. My answer to that question is an unqualified yes. Of 
course we should do just that. What we must take great care with is 
seeing to it that any national standards strengthen and encourage the 
standards that are already being set in any of the States; that they be 
able to move forward; not an excuse to move backward; and that they 
measure real knowledge. I believe that the heart of some of the 
objections to the national standards are the ones made by the American 
Federation of Teachers to Washington State mathematics. There just is 
no way except in the heart of some totally abstract profession that you 
can justify giving 100 percent to a student who gets the wrong answer 
to a question. It may be encouraging students to move towards a way to 
come up with the right answer. But that is not something that ought to 
get 100 percent.
  I hope we derive a system for whatever national tests come, and I 
think some are likely to come that measure real knowledge and real 
progress, and that encourages States to make their own standards even 
tougher and their assessments to take place more frequently.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time allotted to the Senator has expired.
  Mr. GORTON. I ask for two additional minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GORTON. I would just like to say in summary that I am in no way 
critical of what my State has done, and the movement towards these 
standards I find very encouraging. I think absent these constructive 
criticisms that they are likely to set very, very good and very 
significant standards. It is just that I have to predicate the comment 
that we shouldn't be discouraged by the results. We should be 
discouraged by the results. And we should resolve that we are going to 
do everything possible to cause those results to improve markedly and 
as quickly as possible.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, if I may ask the Senator to yield for one 
additional question, I come from a school where I was involved in a 
graduating class of nine. I come from a county that has 3,000 people. 
The community in which I grew up has 300 citizens. My high school class 
was a class of nine. That school district was educating the children in 
my school to go out into the workplace and to do things with the kind 
of background they gave us in a different time. And that school 
district still exists, and the school still exists. It is still a very 
small school. But now those children that are being educated in that 
school are going out into the marketplace in a different era. We are 
now involved in much different kinds of global competition in which we 
are competing against kids in Germany and Japan who are going to school 
240 days a year. Our kids are going to school 180 days a year competing 
with respect to jobs and economic opportunity. And it is a much 
different world. That ought not suggest that we manage in any way our 
schools differently. The control and the authority and the payment for 
the schools ought to come from local government and local school 
districts and State governments.
  But the point that is made by the people in the technology area, by 
the chamber of commerce and elsewhere, is that we are involved in 
global competition, and our education system must produce the quality 
of education that meets that competition in order for this country to 
succeed and to achieve what we want to achieve in the future.
  That is why it is important for us to be discussing these issues. 
What are we getting for our education dollar? And are we achieving with 
our children proficient levels of mathematics in the fourth grade and 
education in the eighth grade, and how do we measure that?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time allotted to the Senator from 
Washington has expired.
  Mr. DORGAN. I thank the Senator from Washington for yielding.
  Mr. GORTON. I thank the Senator from North Dakota for his thoughtful 
comments, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the role.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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