[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 16]
[House]
[Page 21517]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




            INTRODUCTION OF THE STUDENT TESTING FAIRNESS ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) is recognized 
during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, last spring I received an e-mail from a 
sixth grade math teacher by the name of Dawn Spurr. Dawn teaches in a 
small town in my district, and she wrote to me just after she had given 
her students a standardized test that she did not feel fairly measured 
her students' progress. She told me that several of her students were 
very upset. Some even left the classroom in tears because they simply 
did not have enough time to finish the test even though she felt they 
knew the answers, and she was upset as a teacher because she will be 
judged based on how well her students perform on that test. As a 
result, she said in her letter, Congressman, ``instead of teaching 
students, I am to teach a test.''
  As a result of this e-mail I received, today I am introducing a bill 
titled The Student Testing Fairness Act. This bill will address some of 
the problems with all of the new testing mandates contained in the No 
Child Left Behind law. Even though the test Dawn gave her students was 
not one mandated by the No Child Left Behind law, the law does mandate 
certain standardized testing procedures which will make the situation 
even worse.
  The No Child Left Behind law establishes two important goals: First, 
the law requires schools to make all students proficient in reading and 
math by the year 2013-2014 school year. And, second, the law requires 
schools to close the achievement gap between subgroups of poor and 
minority students and their more affluent nonminority peers. The No 
Child Left Behind law requires annual testing in reading and math of 
all students in grades three through eight and once in grades ten 
through 12 beginning in the 2005-2006 school year.
  Mr. Speaker, effective and appropriate standardized tests can be used 
to measure student progress and to target help where it is most needed. 
However, test scores alone cannot accurately measure a student's 
success or a school's success. Other measures such as attendance rates, 
dropout rates, and the percentage of students taking advanced placement 
tests all contribute to the overall picture of a school's success or 
failure. While the No Child Left Behind law does allow the use of 
multiple measures in assessing a school's success or failure, it 
provides no balance.
  Test scores are always a prerequisite for a school's success, and 
other indicators cannot be used to help a school succeed even though 
they can be used to determine whether or not a school is sanctioned. 
This has very troubling consequences. For example, since schools cannot 
succeed by reducing dropout rates but they can incur sanctions if their 
test scores fail to show consistent annual improvement, they have 
little incentive to keep at-risk students who are more likely to get 
lower test scores from leaving school.
  The Student Testing Fairness Act will give schools and teachers and 
students the flexibility to measure progress using more than just a 
single standardized test. Among several other provisions, my bill will 
give schools credit for any student improvement, not just improvement 
that brings a subgroup of students into the proficiency category. And 
my bill will ensure that help is targeted where it is needed by 
limiting public school choice and supplemental services to those 
subgroups of students who have failed to improve.
  Standardized tests can work, but they are not the only answer, and I 
hope my colleagues will join me in ensuring that the educational 
reforms enacted by the No Child Left Behind bill are truly effective by 
passing the Student Testing Fairness Act into law.
  Mr. Speaker, we have passed huge mandates from the Federal Government 
down to the States. We are underfunding those mandates by $8 billion. 
As a result, students will drop out and teachers and schools will be 
unfairly punished.

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