[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 137 (Monday, October 6, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H8430-H8435]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           WHY NOT HAVE NATIONAL TESTS FOR MATH AND SCIENCE?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore [Mr. Redmond]. Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Shadegg] is 
recognized for half of the remaining time until midnight, approximately 
45 minutes.
  Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity to discuss a 
topic that has also been discussed earlier tonight, and that is the 
question of education.
  I cannot help but comment on my colleagues who were just here on the 
floor before me. In just a few moments of listening to them I heard one 
of them, a gentleman who was previously in the educational 
establishment, either a principal or a superintendent of a school 
district, say that he supports good education and therefore, supports a 
voluntary national testing program.
  It is, indeed, that subject that I want to talk about tonight, 
because it is a topic that is very close to me. I have back home in 
Arizona right now a 13-year-old daughter who is a freshman at 
Thunderbird High School in the Phoenix area, excuse me, a sophomore, 
and struggling to get through her education this year, and to try to 
get into the best school in terms of college that she can possibly get 
into. I have an 11-year-old son who is in grade school.
  Their education is vitally important to me, because I understand that 
in this global economy we are in, precisely how well they do in 
pursuing their education goals will determine in many ways to a great 
extent how well they do throughout the rest of their lives. There 
simply is no issue which is, at core, more important to me, and more 
important in a Nation where we are founded on the notion of universal 
public schools.
  I listened to my colleagues from the other side of the aisle talk 
about public schools and the importance of public schools, yet I have 
to tell the Members, there are a couple of things that I resent. I want 
to talk about those tonight. I resent it when my colleagues on the 
other side of the aisle allege that they are the only ones who care 
about education and the only ones who care about public education. I 
think it is wrong to cast those kinds of aspersions and make those 
kinds of value judgments, because some of us view this issue 
differently than they do.
  I was educated in public schools all the way through, never attended 
a day of private school in my entire life. Not from kindergarten 
through law school did I attend anything but public schools. My 
children are in public schools now. I believe very much in a quality 
public education.
  But just because I believe in that does not mean I have to accept 
their view of the world, or even the professional educators' view of 
the world or, as I like to call them, the educrats' view of the world 
or the Federal Department of Education's view of the world. Instead, I 
bring to this debate my own rational thought, my own experience about 
education, my own views about the importance of public education, but 
mostly about quality education; about challenging my daughter Courtney 
to do her best every day in school; and about challenging my son 
Stephen to do his best every day in school.
  I listened to the other side and they touched upon this issue of 
testing, national testing. That is a major topic that I want to talk 
about tonight. I want to talk about how some of us can believe and 
believe very strongly that as good and as apple pie and as motherhood 
and as all-American as national testing sounds, that we can look at our 
children and see how they are doing in Minnesota versus Arizona, as 
good as those things sound, in point of fact I believe and I believe 
deeply that national testing, if we mean by that federally dictated 
testing, tests written at the Federal Department of Education in 
Washington, D.C., thousands of miles from my home in Moon Valley, 
Arizona, if we mean by that a national testing written by a committee 
set up by this President, or for that matter any other President, if we 
mean one single uniform Federal test applied to every student in 
America, and we will judge every student in America by how they do on 
that test, I submit, it is not only bad, and a bad idea, it could be 
disastrous.
  That does not mean that I do not support education. What it means is 
that when I look at the idea of one Federal test, I recognize that we 
are placing all of our eggs in one basket. If that test is written 
badly, if that test is written, as I fear the test might be written, to 
test the current fads in education, the newest whole math or new math 
or the newest whole language or whole English, or some other popular 
fad within the education establishment, not only will the test not 
measure real performance by my children, by my daughter Courtney or my 
son Stephen, but instead, it will do massive damage, and damage to 
every boy and every girl in public and private school in America, at a 
time when in this global economy we cannot tolerate that.
  Why do I say that? How could just doing a national test, how could 
just having a national test, how could a national test which was 
voluntary, and my colleague pointed out that he could not understand, 
how could a national test that was voluntary be dangerous? How could it 
be a problem?
  I listened to him, and I think many people who view this issue from 
that standpoint are honest and genuine and sincere, and I can even 
understand their point. Instead, I get many of my colleagues back home, 
many of my friends back home, who say, well, explain to me what your 
concern is about national testing. Why is that such a bad idea? Why 
should we not have a single test to test the skills of our children 
across America, so we can look at how they do?
  Let me make a point here. I just had a friend move from Arizona to 
New Jersey this last year. His two boys, a little bit older than my 
children, are now in high school in New Jersey. He thinks they are 
being challenged more rigorously in New Jersey than they were in 
Arizona. So why should we not be able to test that?

  A few years ago I had a good friend who moved from Tucson, Arizona, 
to Maryland, not far from here, Potomac, Maryland. He felt his children 
were being challenged better at their new school than at their old 
school. So what can be wrong with national testing, particularly if it 
is voluntary?
  Let me explain that, for people who are listening and watching, and 
for my colleagues who care about this debate. The problem with national 
testing begins with the issue of what do tests do. Tests set a 
benchmark. They set, in and of themselves, an educational standard. 
They say, we are going to test these subjects and these matters, and if 
you want your students to do well, they had better know these subjects 
and these answers. They had better know what is going to be tested and 
how to answer those questions.
  What I am saying here is that my children's teachers, and indeed, I 
think my teachers and all teachers across America, to a certain degree 
in a very positive sense, teach to the test; that is, they understand 
what the students whose lives and whose education they have been 
entrusted with are going to be tested on, and so they want to be sure 
that they have that knowledge. If math is going to be tested, they will 
stress math.
  But then the question comes, what about math? What within math does 
the test test, because I need to make sure as a teacher that my 
students know those skills that will be tested?
  So I believe that one fact we have to begin to entertain a discussion 
of this topic of a national test is if we agree as a Nation to have a 
single Federal test, written in Washington, D.C. by the Federal 
Department of Education or by some consultant hired by the Department 
of Education, we need to understand that every conscientious teacher in 
America in public schools, in private schools, wherever, my children's 
teachers in the Washington Elementary

[[Page H8431]]

School District in Phoenix, Arizona, will want to know what is in that 
test and will want to know what skills my children need to learn to do 
well on that test.
  And they should do that. My teachers must have taught me the skills 
that were going to be tested, because I was able to make it through my 
education through grade school and high school into college and on into 
law school. So someone taught me what was going to be tested on the 
test.
  So we should begin the debate by understanding that this voluntary 
testing program that my colleagues seem to think is such a great idea 
in fact is in itself setting a national standard.
  Now, you say, well, what is wrong with that? What is the problem with 
setting a national standard? In a minute I am going to talk about some 
of the substantive problems in setting a national standard, but first I 
want to deal with the issue of voluntary.
  How can it be a problem if this is voluntary? Congressman, how can it 
be a problem if we have national test, but you can choose or you cannot 
choose to have your students in your school or your school district 
school take that test? The answer is simple and straightforward.
  In education in America there are very, very few, a relatively small 
number of textbook writers. If we as a Nation establish a national 
test, that tests, for example, math and science, even if we leave out a 
national test on social studies or some other more controversial 
topics, then there will be math and science texts written all across 
America to teach what is on that national test. It is the marketplace. 
It is reality.
  So when the parents and the teachers in my school district, the 
Washington School District in Phoenix, Arizona, want to select a text, 
most of the texts they will have to choose from, most of the textbooks 
that they could give to my student, my child, or my son or my daughter 
in school in Phoenix, Arizona, will be texts, textbooks that are 
written to that national test.
  So voluntariness at that moment goes pretty much out the window, 
because we will have a national test, and we will understand that 
everyone in America is going to be judged on that, and the textbook 
writers will understand if kids need to learn to pass that test, they 
need to have a textbook that gives them those subject matters and 
teaches them the skills to pass that test.
  So the notion of, well, it is just voluntary, they can opt not to do 
it, turns out to be a ruse, a charade, not real, because every teacher 
in America first will want to teach to the test, because he or she will 
care about their students' performance. Teachers are genuine, caring, 
loving people who want their students to do best. So they will teach to 
that national test. But for a school that wants to opt out, they will 
feel have a limited choice, because virtually all of the textbooks will 
be written to that national test.
  Why is there then a problem with a national test? Here I want to turn 
to some experts who have greater experience and knowledge than I do. I 
have to tell you that when I entered this debate I was not sure that 
national tests were a bad idea. I had not thought through the idea of 
teachers teaching to the test. I had not thought through the idea of 
textbooks being written by the handful of textbook companies in America 
to that test.
  So I did not instantaneously say, this is a bad idea. As a matter of 
fact, I was much like most Americans who say, gee, what is wrong with a 
national test? As a matter of fact, I read a syndicated columnist today 
about how he had gotten into the cab in a major city, here in town, and 
the cab driver engaged him in a discussion of this issue of national 
tests. I think America is engaged in that debate. I think they are 
uncertain about this issue. That is why I wanted to talk about it 
tonight.
  Let me turn to the experts. One of the experts in field, someone I 
respect a lot, is a woman by the name of Lynn Cheney. Lynn Cheney is a 
senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and her work in 
this area I think is very important for all Americans to read and 
understand, because this is an important issue to every American. What 
could be more important than our children's education?
  What debate is greater than this question about national tests? The 
President on the floor of this very House from that dais right there 
told America in his State of the Union this year that he was going to 
impose national, that is, federally-written, Washington, D.C. tests in 
math and science, and he called America to rally to that cause.
  I am standing here tonight saying, we ought not to rally to that 
cause. Let me make it clear why. Ms. Cheney in a recent article which 
appeared in the Wall Street Journal on September 29 addressed this 
issue. Her column is headed, ``A Failing Grade for Clinton's National 
Standards.'' Remember, national tests will set national standards.
  She begins her column by pointing out that, ``A consultant who sits 
on the President's committee overseeing the proposed national 
mathematics exam had written an essay, and in this essay, he explained 
his views of education.'' It turns out this consultant is not alone. 
His views are shared by apparently hundreds of mathematics teachers 
across America, because the test that he advocates he is also helping 
write for an association of math teachers across America. He is also a 
consultant to the education department of the State of Connecticut. His 
name is Stephen Leinwand. I do not know that that matters.
  But what he wrote in the essay, according to Ms. Cheney, was that it 
is downright dangerous to teach students things like 6 times 7 is 42.

                              {time}  2245

  ``Put down the 2 and carry the 4.'' It is dangerous, he wrote in this 
essay, to teach children basic mathematical computational skills. 
Indeed, he goes on to articulate in this article that he does not think 
we should teach children any calculation skills that involve whole 
number computation. We have to say, why? Are we missing something here?
  The answer is straightforward. He writes if we teach children that 6 
times 7 is 42, we will be, and I quote, ``anointing the few'', who 
master this skill, who learn that 6 times 7 is 42, and learn the rest 
of the multiplication tables or the division tables. He says we will be 
anointing the few who master these skills, and I quote, ``casting out 
the many.''
  The bottom line in his view of the world is that we should not teach 
addition, subtraction, multiplication and division to the students in 
America, and since we should not teach it, he believes fervently and he 
advocates we should not test it. We should not teach and we should not 
test basic mathematical skills to our children in schools in America 
today because we will be sorting people out. That is, we will be 
anointing the few and rewarding those who get the answer right, and we 
will be casting out the many who fail.
  Well, I happen to disagree with his numbers right there because I 
think children in America, the vast majority, do learn the 
multiplication tables and addition, subtraction, and division, and so 
we are not anointing the few and casting out many, but we are learning 
to teach children that there are skills that they will need in their 
life.
  Mr. Leinwand goes on in his essay and explains why the committee on 
which he sits, a committee which is helping to write the proposed 
national test, recommends a national math exam that would avoid 
directly assessing certain knowledge and skills such as whole number 
computation, and that is a quote.
  So, he is anxious to test America and to have a national math test. 
He is on the President's committee to write this math test, but the 
test should not test basic knowledge and skills such as whole number 
computation, that is addition, subtraction, multiplication and 
division, because we will make children, to put it simply, feel bad. 
Mr. Leinwand thinks that is a bad idea.
  The school that Mr. Leinwand comes from is a whole math school or a 
new math school. There are other articles that talk about it. Lynne 
Cheney wrote in the Weekly Standard of August 4 in which she talks 
about the entire school in America of math teachers who believe that we 
must throw out computational skills and teach whole math and what is 
also called in different lingo, ``fuzzy math'' or ``new math.''
  Some may believe that new math is the greatest thing in the world and 
may want their child taught that, but

[[Page H8432]]

what I want to point out in discussing this issue is that the potential 
disaster here is a national one if we set a national test that all 
children must learn and pass.
  If the education establishment in Washington, DC, captures this idea, 
if the President succeeds in convincing Americans that, by gosh, if we 
care about our kids we must have a national test, and we write one test 
and it is fatally flawed because it tests not addition, multiplication, 
subtraction or division but tests only the newest fad in math, fuzzy 
math or new math, we will be forever condemning at least a generation 
of America's children to not learning the basic skills they need.
  Mr. Leinwand defends his stand saying, Listen, it is more important 
that kids be able to think their way through problems. I agree. I think 
kids ought to be able to think through problems. And he defends his 
position by saying everybody in America uses a calculator and they 
ought to be able to bring a calculator to school, do the calculations 
themselves.
  Mr. Speaker, that is a great idea, but I have had the experience of 
picking up a calculator and using it and looking at the answer and 
saying wait a minute, that answer is wrong. Sometimes the electronic 
devices that we rely upon go bad. Somebody spills their glass of water 
or something on the calculator and the answer we get is wrong. If 
students were never taught in school addition, subtraction, 
multiplication and division, then how are they going to have a gut 
feeling for what is right or wrong?
  That concern was expressed by a fellow Arizonian. Marianne Moody 
Jennings is a woman whom I admire in Arizona. I have never had the 
pleasure of meeting her, but she became interested in this issue as 
well. She wrote a column called ``MTV Math Does Not Add Up.'' She is, 
herself, a professor at Arizona State University. She is the director 
of the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics at Arizona State University. 
Here is her experience with this issue.
  She has young children like I do. She said one evening she came home 
and her blood began to boil because she witnessed her daughter, who I 
am sure she was a grade school student, I do not know, was at home 
doing her math home work and she was using a calculator to compute 10 
percent of 470.
  Think of it. Do we need a generation of Americans, do we need to 
decide in this Nation that basic math skills are so unimportant that 
for a task as 10 percent of 470 they need a calculator? And if we do, 
who at some point in the history of this world will know whether the 
calculators are right or wrong?
  Ms. Jennings became supremely upset about this and began to teach her 
daughter that she should learn those math skills herself and that the 
calculation of 10 percent of 470 should be one that she could do in her 
head in a nanosecond.
  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, one of the 
things that we begin to see in supermarkets are the calculators on the 
carts. As a practical matter, as somebody who has a business degree as 
opposed to a law degree, one of the great tactics is to change the size 
of the box so the new larger style actually has a bigger box but 
sometimes less in it.
  If shoppers cannot do basic math on their feet, they are ripe to be 
taken advantage of in every supermarket aisle, in every toy department, 
in every department store. And I say this as somebody who has been and 
my family have always been retailers, but if people cannot do basic 
math, they are not going to be able to figure out what is the best buy.
  Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, that is exactly right. 
Our children in America need these basic skills and they are vitally 
important. If we say to them, as this national math association 
proposes to say, and they already by the way have on their tests, those 
written by I think the National Association of Math Teachers, they have 
already decreased rather dramatically the amount that current tests 
used in schools across America test basic skills. But if we adopt a 
national test, an examination that does not test any or tests almost no 
basic skills, does not ask eighth graders if they can, without a 
calculator, add, subtract, divide, multiply basic calculations, we are 
condemning them to precisely what the gentleman points out. We are 
condemning an entire Nation to be taken advantage of.
  More importantly, we are putting ourselves at a huge disadvantage. 
But I want to make the point that this is not a debate about Bill 
Clinton and his test proposal. It is not a debate about Steven 
Leinwand. It is not a debate about whether we like or do not like the 
Federal Department of Education. It is not a debate about whether we 
like or do not like new math or whole English. That is not the issue.
  The issue here is a more fundamental one and it is nothing less than, 
to use a government term, Federalism. But Federalism is nothing more 
than the expression of belief in individuals to address and solve their 
own problems.
  What really is applied here is the proposition that the parents and 
the teachers and the administrators at the school down the street from 
my house, at Lookout Mountain Elementary where my son Stephen goes, or 
Thunderbird High where my daughter Courtney goes, that those parents 
and those teachers and those students and those administrators can do a 
better job of figuring out education at that school. And certainly the 
Arizona Department of Education, which gets somewhat involved in these 
issues, can do a better job of listening to the people of the Arizona 
and they can make those decisions for themselves.
  But I mention the word ``Federalism.'' I am not just against national 
standards because I do not like the Department of Education and I do 
like the people at my children's schools. I am not just against it 
because I do not trust Bill Clinton and I do trust the principal at 
Courtney's school and Stephen's schools. I am against it for a bigger 
reason and that is the whole notion of Federalism.
  It was a part of the genius of this Nation. It was if we had a Nation 
that was one Nation but made up of 50 different States as we have now 
come to be, and if we said that basic national policies, national 
defense, foreign trade, and trade between the States could be regulated 
by Congress and the Federal Government, but if we left the other 
decisions, for example decisions about the education of our children, 
to those 50 different States and to the little communities and 
localities within those States, the school board association in my 
neighborhood, then if one of those schools had a great idea, they could 
pursue that idea and maybe do a great job and it would be picked up in 
some other State. Or if one a bad idea, and I suggest Mr. Leinwand's 
idea in my view is a bad idea, and if the State of Connecticut wants to 
pay him to teach and write a test that does not test the eighth graders 
in Connecticut basic math skills, so be it. Maybe in 10 years, the 
Connecticut schools and the schoolchildren will be way ahead of the 
Arizona schools and schoolchildren on math. Maybe Mr. Leinwand is 
right; I suggest he is wrong.
  But think of it this way. If he is right, Arizona can choose to 
follow him. If he is wrong, and only Connecticut pursues his radical 
ideas, then only the children this Connecticut suffer. But if we 
embrace Bill Clinton's idea, and let us assume it was well-intended, 
let us assume that my colleagues who were here for the last hour who 
implored us to adopt a national standard because they think that will 
help kids, if we follow their lead and if Mr. Leinwand or his 
colleagues write a national math test which pursues whole math or new 
math or new new math, the catastrophe to education is not confined to 
Connecticut; it will spread across America because that national test 
will set a national standard.
  The national test and the national standard will be picked up by the 
textbooks across America and it will not matter if States voluntarily 
participate or if the people in Arizona choose not to participate 
voluntarily, opt out, because the only textbooks they will be able to 
get will be textbooks that teach that national standard. And that one-
size-fits-all national standard which does not teach math computational 
skills as Mr. Leinwand wants it not to teach it and not to test it, and 
remember he is not only on the President's committee, but he is also on 
this National Association of Math Teachers committee which as an 
association has disavowed teaching basic math skills, we will have a 
disaster.
  The literature here is pretty clear. California has already pursued 
whole math and it has turned out to be, in

[[Page H8433]]

the view of many teachers and parents in California, a disaster. And 
they have now tried to seize it back, and in many schools, school 
district by school district they are throwing out the new new math or 
the whole math and putting back in the basic math.
  As a matter of fact in one school district they have forbidden 
calculators in grades one through three because they want kids to learn 
the basic skills. But if we pursue a national standard. If the 
President wins this debate which will occur between the House and the 
Senate in the conference committee in the next few weeks, we do not 
have a problem in just Connecticut or just California, we will have a 
nationwide disaster.
  I want to point this out, because this issue is going to go to a 
conference committee. The Senate has adopted one position on this 
issue, the House has another position, and the President a third.
  The President's position is we should have a national standard 
written by the Federal Department of Education, a national test written 
by the Federal Department of Education and if there is a new fad in the 
Federal Department of Education by the bureaucrats and the ``educrats'' 
in there, that is fine. Put that fad in the test and we can change that 
later. It will be hard to change a single Federal standard.
  The Senate has taken a middle ground. The Senate's position is let us 
go ahead and have a national test, but let us pick an independent body 
to write that national test, that one-size-fits-all national test.

                              {time}  2300

  Mr. SOUDER. It is important to note for the record that the 
independent body is picked two-thirds by the President of the United 
States.
  Mr. SHADEGG. That is scary in and of itself. One of the proposals by 
the Senate was to give this test writing responsibility to an 
organization called the National Assessment Governing Board. The idea 
behind the Senate proposal is we will take it out of the Federal 
Department of Education, where trends in pop math or popular teaching 
and writing in the education field is most fervent, and we will put it 
in a more objective group that is not quite as subject to these trends 
or fads in education. And the problem with that, Ms. Cheney writes 
about it in this second article entitled ``Yes to High Standards, No to 
National Tests,'' a position paper written by Lynne Cheney, senior 
fellow, American Enterprise Institute, she says the problem with the 
Senate position is one of naivete; is it assumes that the Federal 
Department of Education is the only one subject to these national fads 
in education and that if we just take it away from them and give it to 
this new organization, the National Assessment Governing Board, that 
they will protect these national one-size-fits-all tests from fads and 
trends.
  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, the 
gentleman is being very kind. Mrs. Cheney was being very kind as well. 
The fact is it was a sham compromise to try to get themselves out of a 
pickle because the nominees, the overwhelming majority of those 
nominees would be picked by the President, recommended by the 
Department of Education, so in fact it is the same body. It looks 
different but if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck and swims like 
a duck, it is a duck.
  Mr. SHADEGG. Is the gentleman suggesting that this might have been 
just a political charade so it was not publicly vested in the Federal 
Department of Education, but the reality is that it would be the exact 
same?
  Mr. SOUDER. I was certainly suggesting that the only difference was 
that there might be a third minority on the one and the other would be 
all Clinton appointees.
  Mr. SHADEGG. For a moment, Mr. Speaker, it seems to me the House 
position is the right position. The House position, the idea of a one-
size-fits-all national test is a bad one, and it is not bad because of 
who writes it. It is bad because of the implications of a single test. 
Letting parents, teachers, school advocates in my home State write our 
test I think is the right way to go.
  There are already many quote unquote national tests. The Iowa Basic 
Skills Test was given to my school all the time I was growing up. I 
think they are still given there now. I would be interested in hearing 
from the gentleman what is given in Indiana. But it is not as though we 
cannot compare performance from school to school or State to State.
  And indeed, if we want a non-Federal, that is a nongovernment written 
test that people could voluntarily choose to give to their children, 
that might have some value. But the problem in this debate and the 
concern I have is that we are going to surrender, in the spirit of 
doing good for our children, we are going to surrender the notion that 
that means we need a single national test.
  I heard my colleagues on the other side of the aisle tonight say, you 
cannot care about kids, you cannot support public education, you cannot 
believe in the process if you do not support national tests. They are 
wrong. I think every American in their gut that thinks about it knows 
that they are wrong. We cannot turn education in America over to the 
latest fad, as embodied either in the Department of Education or in a 
sham independent group.
  That is why I was compelled to come to the floor tonight and talk 
about this issue, so that the people back home in my district who are 
just kind of casually thinking about the idea of national standards 
would think it through one more step and recognize that a national test 
sets a national standard, and if that national standard is written in 
Washington, DC, many thousands of miles from my home in Phoenix, AZ, 
and at least 1,000 miles from your home in Indiana, I think they will 
recognize they would rather have input at the local level.
  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, I 
would like to reinforce the gentleman's remarks. I may be even more 
scared than you because Indiana is only 600 miles away from Washington; 
therefore, we are even more vulnerable than the people in Arizona.
  One of the things that is unusual about this Congress is that we are 
actually having a discussion about the role of federalism and the role 
of States and the Federal Government. It has been something that we 
have been pushing. We are at a critical point here on national testing. 
As an American history buff, I have gone back and forth and wondered at 
the time of the founding of our country, would I have been more of an 
anti-Federalist or a Federalist? Where would I have been on the 
Articles of Confederation? Would I be like Fisher Ames from New 
England, who was very skeptical of the Constitution and worried that it 
was giving up States' rights, or Patrick Henry, another hero of mine, 
``Give me liberty or give me death,'' when he heard about the Articles 
of Confederation moving into the Constitution? He said, ``I smell a 
rat.'' He was worried that the Constitution was going to be abused the 
way it is being abused today.
  I on the other hand, as a business major and a business person, I 
want to reiterate one other thing that the gentleman from Arizona said. 
I attended public elementary school, junior high and high school. My 
wife did the same. All three of my children have done the same. We 
Republicans care deeply about public education. That is why we are so 
concerned about these national tests. As we get into this debate, and 
as a business major and a businessman, I have deep concerns about the 
quality of education graduates.
  A book that had a big impact on me was ``Cultural Literacy'' by 
Hirsch, and in that book he suggests that we are in danger in America 
of a vulcanization, the root word that comes over what we are seeing in 
Bosnia and Croatia right now, that is, overlapping groups of people who 
cannot communicate with each other. We are in danger of that in 
America.
  We need some commonality of language, some commonality of history. We 
need high school graduates who can read and write and do basic math. We 
need people who have the skills with which to come into industry. We 
are already near the point where private industry has as many teachers 
as the public schools, because they are so upset about the quality of 
education. It is not hard to understand what is driving the desire for 
standards among businessmen and among many people in this country. We 
need to have standards.
  The question is, whose standards? Even though I, as somebody who has 
certain tendencies, the gentleman from

[[Page H8434]]

Arizona and I, who are good friends, often will debate what is the 
proper role of the Federal Government and State governments. And at 
times I tend to be a little more proactive in the area of the Federal 
Government than the gentleman from Arizona. We have had some 
interesting evenings debating this. But nobody who understands the 
founding of our Republic and who understands the evolution of our 
Republic believes that education was intended to be a Federal role.
  One of the things that we need to understand up here is to understand 
why our Founding Fathers were concerned about certain matters falling 
into the hands of the Federal Government. We have heard the appalling 
cases that the gentleman from Arizona brought out in math. You would 
think that math would be relatively noncontroversial. We already saw 
what happened with history standards.
  Mr. SHADEGG. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, for just one moment, we 
really did get into this debate because there was an earlier debate 
where the advocates of national tests said, we will just do national 
tests. They never pointed out there are subjective areas where what you 
teach can vary rather dramatically. If you teach American history, you 
can have one view of it or another, and they can be radically 
different.
  So the President and others responded and said, we will not do 
subject areas like social studies or history. We will do the black and 
white, there is a right answer, there is a wrong answer, like math and 
science. And on the floor of the House here, in his State of the Union, 
the President proposed only to test math and science.
  I think the gentleman from Indiana is about to point out some of the 
outrageous things that are going on in the other areas. I just want to 
point out, even when you go to so-called objective subject areas like 
math and science, you discover that there are these radical trends 
which say two plus two is not four or you should not teach kids 6 times 
7 is 42. And even what we think of as objective in the crazy world of 
the education bureaucracy has become itself subjective.
  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, what the gentleman has pointed out is 
absolutely correct. You have devastated our hardest argument to make, 
which is that math even is politicized in this day and age, and can be 
ineffective if consolidated with power in the hands of the wrong 
people.
  I want to hasten to point out, for those who say, but if the Federal 
Government makes a mistake, they can change it, this national testing 
is moving forward. Inside the Department of Education, as they prepared 
the tests without any authorization from Congress, without any 
appropriations from Congress, in fact with over two-thirds of this 
House of Representatives going on record against national testing, it 
still is moving forward. If they passed a bad test and we wanted to try 
to amend that test, even in most cases, if we could get two-thirds in 
the House to override, the Senate would block us and certainly the 
President would veto it and we would have a filibuster in the Senate.
  In other words, once it is bad, it will probably not get corrected.
  Now, the problem here is that there is a history, so to speak, with 
this. Lynne Cheney, who we have quoted a number of times tonight, 
actually was in the humanities art department of the Federal Government 
and now admits that she made the mistake of granting the first funds 
for the history exams. She says, ``I was wrong.'' She watched the bias 
that crept into the history. She has written also how every category in 
our universities, and do we want to spread this to our high schools, 
has become politicized.
  College Art Association conference warning faculty members not to 
teach women artists such as Mary Cassatt, who has beautiful oil 
paintings over in our national art museums, because they frequently 
painted women and children and thus reinforced patriarchal thought. At 
the University of Wisconsin, a professor from the University of 
Wisconsin writing in the Harvard Educational Review, the most 
prestigious university in our country, at least arguably, urges her 
fellow professors to be open about their intention to appropriate 
public resources, classrooms, school supplies, teacher-professor 
salaries, academic requirements and degrees to further, quote, 
progressive agendas. Curriculum and instruction 607, in which students 
learn how to conduct political demonstrations and then conduct these 
political demonstrations in the library, mall and administrative 
offices of the university; for these efforts, students receive three 
hours credit.
  In a recent issue of College English, a publication of the National 
Council of Teachers of English, a professor from California advises 
university teachers to vary the political strategy they use in the 
classroom to suit the institution. For example, he says, in his middle 
class university he tries to show how the United States offers freedom 
of choice and a chance to get ahead and then challenges their belief in 
that. Then he shows them in his English class the odds against their 
attaining room at the top, the way their education has channeled them 
towards a mid-level professional and social slot and conditioned them 
into authoritarian conformity in English class.
  Then we have the Smithsonian museum in the United States which has 
been under attack for how they present the American West. They have 
been under attack for how they tried to rewrite the Japanese American 
section of World War II and had to have Congress intervene. They said, 
in an exhibition called Etiquette of the Underclass, they wrote, 
``Upward mobility,'' announced materials accompanying the exhibition, 
``is one of our most cherished myths.''
  Now, what we are seeing is the National Council of English, we are 
seeing the Harvard Education Review, the College Art Association, we 
are seeing the Smithsonian institution, all politicizing major 
statements in the United States.
  My concern spreads past this. I read earlier this evening, and I 
wanted to go through this again, at Casa Roble High School into 
Sacramento, California, this was a values appraisal scale in a career 
study in a technology class. This was given to a student. It was given 
to me last Thursday. It is not something that was done 10 years ago. It 
was done August 29, 1997. It was not something that is far out. It has 
been done now, we found it in five States. It appears to be possibly 
the National Education Association that is circulating this. It is 
incredibly intrusive.
  On the one hand these questions can be innocuous and you can see how 
they might be valuable to a guidance counselor. On the other hand, 
think of the dangers of an all-powerful Federal Government getting this 
kind of information on our children.
  Mr. SHADEGG. I just want to clarify, you are going to read to us from 
a survey given to students at a public school, not a religious or 
private or sectarian school, and administered by the school asking 
these questions of public school students; is that right?
  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, in a technology class. The reason I want to 
point this out is this is what we do not want to have happen in a 
Federal test. If it happens in a Federal test, we will never get it 
changed. Question number one starts off, ``I have a regular physical 
checkup by my doctor every year.''
  Mr. SHADEGG. These questions are put to the student who answers this?
  Mr. SOUDER. Yes, and you can have a 10 for definitely true, 7 for 
mostly true, 5 for undecided, mostly false is a 3, definitely false is 
a zero.
  Mr. SHADEGG. They would be revealing this information, answering 
these questions about themselves to be handed over to the school and 
for the school to use for whatever purpose they chose?
  Mr. SOUDER. For technology class, and it is a career study. It is to 
help channel kids as to what they should do. Think of this explosive 
information. Is this what we want public authorities knowing about our 
families? And if you do not think this is one of the most intrusive 
things you have ever heard, then perhaps you are on a different planet 
than I am.
  Number two, ``I will regularly take my children to church services.'' 
So they are asking these children in high school to anticipate whether 
they are going to take their children to church services. ``I have a 
close relationship with either my mother or my father.'' You will see 
patterns to a number of questions I am reading. Half of them are family 
intrusive and half of them

[[Page H8435]]

are religious intrusive. ``I have taught Sunday school class or 
otherwise taken an active part in my church,'' if that is any business 
of the school.

                              {time}  2315

  Number 24, I believe in a God who answers prayers. I believe that 
tithing, giving one-tenth of one's earnings to the church, is one's 
duty to God. Number 41, I pray to God about my problems. Number 43, I 
like to spend holidays with my family. Number 53, it is important that 
grace be said before meals. Number 59, I care what my parents think 
about the things I do. Number 63, I believe there is life after death. 
Number 72, I read the bible and other religious writings regularly. 
Number 78, I love my parents. Number 82, I believe that God created man 
in his own image. Number 91, if I ask God for forgiveness, my sins are 
forgiven. Number 95, I respect my father and mother.

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