Clinton Promotes Education Initiative for National Testing

President Clinton tried to head off grass-roots resistance to his education initiatives Monday, saying that America’s children will be hurt and “the rest of the country will pay the price” unless schools begin administering nationwide tests of student performance.

The president made his most fervent and lengthy pitch yet for his proposal to institute standard tests to ensure that all fourth-graders have learned to read and all eighth-graders are proficient in math.

The proposal, perhaps the most controversial of Clinton’s broad package of education initiatives, has been criticized by some educators and politicians as an attempt by the federal government to usurp state control over education.

“That’s nonsense,” Clinton said in response. He accused his opponents of hiding behind a “very small fig leaf” and suggested that the only way U.S. students will be able to catch up to those in other industrial countries is if people stop talking about states’ rights and start giving students national tests that reflect global standards.

“I say, from Maryland to Michigan to Montana, reading is reading and math is math,” Clinton told members of the Maryland Legislature gathered in the ornate House chamber of the state capitol. “No school board is in charge of algebra and no state legislature can enact the law of physics.”

Although Clinton made a point of describing his quick trip to Annapolis as an effort to persuade states to support his education priorities, he was clearly preaching to the converted in Maryland, where both legislative houses are controlled by Democrats and state officials are already pursuing education initiatives similar to the president’s.

“He has very little to sell here,” said Nancy Grasmick, Maryland’s state superintendent of schools, adding that the president’s proposals are “totally congruent with what Maryland is doing.”

But the president clearly would receive mixed reviews on his testing proposal in many other state capitals, and in Washington the GOP-controlled Congress already has expressed skepticism.

“This is not the federal government’s job. It’s the state’s job,” said Robert Calfee, a professor of education and psychology at Stanford University and a co-chairman of the California commission charged with developing statewide academic standards.

“If you’re going to move ahead on a nationwide test, it makes sense only if you move ahead with nationwide curriculum,” he added. “But then states would ask: ‘Why is the federal government taking over our responsibility?’ ”

California’s experience shows how controversial even statewide tests can be. Its latest statewide exam system was dismantled a few years ago amid criticism from conservatives that it failed to measure basic skills and was intrusive. The standards being developed by Calfee’s commission likely will be turned into a new statewide assessment system, but new tests are not expected to be ready for classroom use until after the year 2000, Calfee said.

Most states, however, have their own statewide testing programs. They also use the National Assessment of Education Progress Test to evaluate a sample of their students. Clinton’s proposed fourth-grade reading test would be modeled on this exam and the eighth-grade math evaluation would be derived from the Third International Math and Science Study, a test that the United States and a dozen other nations use to determine and compare student achievement in those subjects.

Richard Wolf, a professor of psychology and education at the Teachers College, Columbia University, who worked on the Third International Math and Science Study, argued that a national test would end up telling educators what they already know.

“Kids in well-to-do, suburban areas are going to do well and kids in poor urban areas are going to do poorly,” Wolf said.

For all its critics, the president’s proposal has many strong advocates, including California Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin.

“We jolly well better set national standards or people should stop wondering why we’re behind Germany, Singapore and Japan when it comes to personal achievement,” Eastin said.

She predicted that the proposal will be controversial with California politicians but will receive strong support from state businesses.

“The army doesn’t have different standards for different bases,” she added.

Clinton used the same analogy to explain why nationwide testing is so important.

“Just think how silly it would be,” Clinton said, if in every state where troops underwent basic training, instructors decided it was too difficult to abide by “uniform standards,” so they were told to come up with their own programs and “we’ll hope it works the next time we’re in the Persian Gulf.”

“We’ve got the most diverse democracy in the world,” Clinton said. “Who are we kidding that we’re going to create the kind of country we want--where everybody’s got a chance to make it--when we haven’t even taken the first elemental step to say, here’s how everyone should read by the fourth grade, here’s the math everybody ought to know by eighth grade.”