[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 28 (Tuesday, March 6, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1898-S1899]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. WELLSTONE:
  S. 460. A bill to provide for fairness and accuracy in high stakes 
educational decisions for students; to the Committee on Health, 
Education, Labor, and Pensions.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, today I am reintroducing a bill I 
introduced last year that addresses high stakes testing: the practice 
of using a test as the sole determinant of whether a student will be 
graduated, promoted or placed in different ability groupings. I am 
increasingly concerned that high stakes tests are being grossly abused 
in the name of greater accountability, and almost always to the serious 
detriment of our children.
  Testing is necessary and beneficial. We should require it. But, 
allowing the continued misuse of high-stakes tests is, in itself, a 
gross failure of imagination, a failure both of educators and of 
policymakers, who persistently refuse to provide the educational 
resources necessary to guarantee an equally rich educational experience 
for all our children. That all citizens will be given an equal start 
through a sound education is one of the most basic, promised rights of 
our democracy. Our chronic refusal as a nation to guarantee that right 
for all children, including poor children, is a national disgrace.
  This legislation would stem the growing trend of misusing high stakes 
tests. The legislation would require that states and districts use 
multiple indicators of student achievement in addition to standardized 
tests if they are going to use tests as part of a high stakes decision. 
The legislation would also require that if tests are used, they must be 
valid and reliable for the purposes for which they are used; must 
measure what the student was taught; and must provide appropriate 
accommodations for students with limited English proficiency and 
disabilities.
  It is important to note that the American Psychological Association, 
the group entrusted with developing the standards for educational 
testing, has endorsed this legislation. Like many Americans who care 
deeply that our students are assessed appropriately, they feel that it 
is crucial for us to stem a tide that it becoming increasingly 
problematic.
  I would like to explain exactly why this bill would be so important 
and why I seek your support for it. I am struck by National Education 
Association President Bob Chase's comparison of this trend toward high 
stakes testing to the movie, ``Field of Dreams.'' In my view, it is as 
though people are saying, ``If we test them, they will perform.'' In 
too many places, testing, which is a critical part of systemic 
educational accountability, has ceased its purpose of measuring 
educational and school improvement and has become synonymous with it.
  Making students accountable for test scores works well on a bumper 
sticker, and it allows many politicians to look good by saying that 
they will not tolerate failure. But it represents a hollow promise. Far 
from improving education, high stakes testing marks a major retreat 
from fairness, from accuracy, from quality and from equity.
  When used correctly, standardized tests are critical for diagnosing 
inequality and for identifying where we need improvement. They enable 
us to measure achievement across groups of students so that we can help 
ensure that states and districts are held accountable for improving the 
achievement of all students regardless of race, income, gender, limited 
English proficiency or disability. Tests are a critical tool, but they 
are not a panacea.
  The abuse of tests for high stakes purposes has subverted the 
benefits tests can bring. Using a single standardized test as the sole 
determinant for promotion, tracking, ability grouping and graduation is 
not fair and has not fostered greater equality or opportunity for 
students. First, standardized tests can not sufficiently validly or 
reliably assess what students know to make high stakes decisions about 
them.
  The 1999 National Research Council report, ``High Stakes,'' concludes 
that

[[Page S1899]]

``no single test score can be considered a definitive measure of a 
student's knowledge,'' and that ``an educational decision that will 
have a major impact on a test taker should not be made solely or 
automatically on the basis of a single test score.''
  The ``Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing,'' 1999 
Edition, which has served as the standard for test developers and users 
for decades, asserts that: ``In educational settings, a decision or a 
characterization that will have a major impact on a student should not 
be made on the basis of a single test score.''
  Even test publishers, including Harcourt Brace, CTB McGraw Hill, 
Riverside and ETS, consistently warn against this practice. For 
example, Riverside Publishing asserts in the ``Interpretive Guide for 
School Administrators'' for the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, ``Many of 
the common misuses, of standardized tests, stem from depending on a 
single test score to make a decision about a student or class of 
students.''
  CTB McGraw Hill writes that ``A variety of tests, or multiple 
measures, is necessary to tell educators what students know and can do 
. . . the multiple measures approach to assessment is the keystone to 
valid, reliable, fair information about student achievement.''
  There are many reasons tests cannot be relied upon as the sole 
determinant in making high stakes decisions about students. The 
National Research Council describes how these tests can be unreliable. 
The Council concludes that ``a student's test score can be expected to 
vary across different versions of a test, . . . as a function of the 
particular sample questions asked and/or transitory factors, such as 
the student's health on the day of the test. Thus, no single test score 
can be considered a definitive measure of a student's knowledge.''
  The research of David Rogosa at Stanford University shows how test 
scores are not valid, in isolation, to make judgements about individual 
achievement. His study of California's Stanford 9 National Percentile 
Rank Scores for individual students showed that the chances that a 
student whose true score is in the 50th percentile will receive a 
reported score that is within 5 percentage points of his true score are 
only 30 percent in reading and 42 percent on ninth grade math tests.
  Rogosa also showed that on the Stanford 9 test ``the chances, . . . 
that two students with identical ``real achievement'' will score more 
than 10 percentile points apart on the same test'' is 57 percent for 
9th graders and 42 percent on the fourth grade reading test. This 
margin of error shows why it would not be fair to use a cut-score in 
making a high stakes decision about a child.
  Robert Rayborn, who directs Harcourt's Stanford 9 program in 
California reenforced these findings when asked about the Stanford 9. 
He said, ``They should never make high-stakes individual decisions with 
a single measure of any kind,'' including the Stanford 9.
  Politicians and policy makers who continue to push for high stakes 
tests and educators who continue to use them in the face of this 
knowledge have closed their eyes to clearly set professional and 
scientific standards. They demand responsibility and high standards of 
students and schools while they let themselves get away with defying 
the most basic standards of the education profession.
  It would be irresponsible if a parent or a teacher used a 
manufactured product on children in a way that the manufacturer says is 
unsafe. Why do we then honor and declare ``accountable" policy makers 
and politicians who use tests on children in a way that the test 
manufacturers have said is effectively unsafe?
  Many of my colleagues will remember how 8,600 students in New York 
City were mistakenly held in summer school because their tests were 
graded incorrectly or how 54 students in Minnesota were denied their 
diplomas because of a test scoring error.
  When we talk about responsibility, what could be more irresponsible 
than using an invalid or unreliable measure as the sole determinant of 
something so important as high school graduation or in-school 
promotion?
  It has been clearly established through research that high stakes 
tests for individual students, when used in isolation, are fatally 
flawed. I would, however, also like to address a general issue that 
this bill does not address directly, but that I think is really what 
all of this is about in the end. The trend towards high stakes testing 
represents a harsh agenda that holds children responsible for our own 
failure to invest in their future and in their achievement. I firmly 
believe that it is grossly unfair, for example, to hold back a student 
based on a standardized test if that student has not had the tools 
required to learn the material covered on the test. When we impose high 
stakes tests on an educational system where there are, as Jonathan 
Kozol says, ``savage inequalities,'' and then we do nothing to address 
the underlying causes of those inequalities, we set up children to 
fail.
  People talk about using tests to motivate students to do well and 
using tests to ensure that we close the achievement gap. This kind of 
talk is unfair because it tells only part of the story. We cannot close 
the achievement gap until we close the gap in investment between poor 
and rich schools no matter how ``motivated'' some students are. We know 
what these key investments are: quality teaching, parental involvement, 
and early childhood education, to name just a few.
  But instead of doing what we know will work, and instead of taking 
responsibility as policy makers to invest in improving students' lives, 
we place the responsibility squarely on children. It is simply 
negligent to force children to pass a test and expect that the poorest 
children, who face every disadvantage, will be able to do as well as 
those who have every advantage.
  When we do this, we hold children responsible for our own inaction 
and unwillingness to live up to our own promises and our own 
obligations. We confuse their failure with our own. This is a harsh 
agenda indeed, for America's children.
  All of us in politics like to get our picture taken with children. We 
never miss a ``photo op.'' We all like to say that ``children are our 
future.'' We are all for children until it comes time to make the 
investment. Too often, despite the talk, when it comes to making the 
investment in the lives of our children, we come up a dollar short.
  Noted civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer used to say, ``I'm sick 
and tired of being sick and tired.'' Well I'm sick and tired of 
symbolic politics. When we say we are for children, we ought to be 
committed to invest in the health, skills and intellect of our 
children. We are not going to achieve our goals on a tin cup budget. 
Unless we make a real commitment and fully fund key programs like Head 
Start, Title I and IDEA, and unless we put our money where our mouth 
is, children will continue to fail.
  We must never stop demanding that children do their best. We must 
never stop holding schools accountable. Measures of student performance 
can include standardized tests, but only when coupled with other 
measures of achievement, more substantive education reforms and a much 
fuller, sustained investment in schools.
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