[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 123 (Tuesday, September 16, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H7287]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               NATIONAL STUDENT TESTING IS NOT THE ANSWER

  (Mr. COOK asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. COOK. Mr. Speaker, the latest great idea from the administration 
to improve education is national testing. After all, who could be 
against a proposal that will make it easier to see how your school is 
doing and make it easier to compare your children against the 
performance of students nationwide?
  I guess my first reaction is that we do not need a national test to 
discover that a school with fourth graders who do not read has a big 
problem. We do not need a national test to figure out that something is 
terribly wrong when kids graduate from high school feeling just 
wonderful about themselves but are unable to write a coherent 
paragraph.
  The bottom line is, we do not need a national test to determine that 
our schools are failing us and failing the communities which support 
them. It is as if the other side actually believes that the same 
schools that do not enforce standards now will suddenly do so if 
Washington comes up with a new test.
  If academic rigor is absent in our schools now, call it a hunch, but 
I am guessing that rigor will be absent in our schools after the latest 
national test is created.

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