[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 10 (Wednesday, February 11, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E148]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


          PROHIBITION ON FEDERALLY SPONSORED NATIONAL TESTING

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                           HON. PATSY T. MINK

                               of hawaii

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, February 5, 1998

       The House in Committee of the Whole House on the State of 
     the Union had under consideration the bill (H.R. 2846) to 
     prohibit spending Federal education funds on national testing 
     without explicit and specific legislation:


  Mrs. MINK of Hawaii. Mr. Chairman, today I will vote against H.R. 
2846, which seeks to prohibit the implementation of the national tests 
proposed by President Clinton.
  The debate on national testing is not a new one. I remember these 
debates from the 60's and 70's and even more recently in the early 
1990's. I opposed national testing then and I oppose it now.
  My vote today does not reflect a change in my position on this issue, 
it is simply a statement that this bill is not needed at this time. We 
know there is a wide difference of opinion on national testing and it 
does always fall along party lines. In fact, the last major debate on 
national testing in the Congress was in 1991 and 1992 over a Bush 
Administration initiative to implement a much broader national testing 
system than what is being proposed by President Clinton.
  When President Clinton offered his proposal for a national Reading 
test for the 4th grade and a national Math test in the 8th grade, we 
again embarked on this familiar debate.
  With very passionate arguments on each side of this issue, the 
Congress--Members of the House and Senate--worked very hard last year 
to craft a compromise in the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations bill. 
While not perfect, as most compromises are not, it was something that 
Members with very different views could agree on.
  The compromise allows only the development of test, not the 
implementation or the distribution. It transfers the responsibility of 
overseeing the tests to the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), 
the same organization that conducts the well-respected NAEP (National 
Assessment of Education Progress) test.
  The bill before us today flies in the face of that compromise. It 
adds no constructive element to the debate that continues on whether we 
should move forward on a national test and whether the Congress is 
ready to authorize such a measure. It seems more a political maneuver 
to focus on areas of disagreement, rather than to move forward on the 
many items of mutual agreement in an education agenda for this country.
  This year the Congress must consider the reauthorization of NAGB and 
NAEP. It seems to me a more constructive approach would be to consider 
in the context of this reauthorization whether to authorize a national 
testing system. The compromise forged in the Labor-HHS-Education 
Appropriations bill will stand while the Congress works on the NAGB and 
NAEP legislation. Why we need to take up this legislation at this time, 
only a few legislative days since the passage of the Labor-HHS-
Education compromise is puzzling.
  Therefore, I will vote against this bill today. It is not 
constructive and it does nothing to further the debate on national 
testing in this country.

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