House OKs Compromise on Clinton National-Exam Plan

After weeks of wrangling over the merits of national education testing, the House voted Friday to accept a compromise that would delay President Clinton’s proposal to assess the reading and math skills of all American schoolchildren.

The 352-65 vote ended a political battle of wills that repeatedly blocked passage of a $270-billion appropriation for the departments of Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services. Opponents of Clinton’s plan wanted to attach a provision to the bill to bar development of the tests.

The funding bill now goes to the Senate, which is expected to vote on it as early as today. Because the White House has endorsed the testing compromise, Clinton is expected to sign the measure into law.

Clinton unveiled the testing plan in his February State of the Union address, calling on states to voluntarily administer uniform reading tests for all fourth-graders and math tests for all eighth-graders.

The president has made the proposal the cornerstone of his administration’s education reform agenda, traveling extensively to promote it in school districts across the country.

Under the compromise, development of national tests would be put on hold while experts study whether existing state and commercial exams can be used to determine whether students are performing adequately in reading and math.

Even if the review ultimately concludes that uniform national tests are preferable, the administration would be unable to proceed with their development unless Congress gives its assent.

Rep. William F. Goodling (R-Pa.), an ardent foe of national tests who had vowed to block the administration proposal, led an opposition coalition in which conservative Republicans were joined by liberal black and Latino Democrats.

“President Clinton’s plan for new national tests is dead for a year,” said Goodling, who chairs the House Education and Workforce Committee.

Many Republicans oppose the development of national tests, fearing that they would undermine the authority of state and local school officials to determine what is taught and what students learn.

Black lawmakers have expressed concern about the impact of national tests on evaluations of children in poor urban schools, arguing instead for additional spending to improve classrooms and teaching materials. Latino leaders cite similar worries about the effect of national reading tests on non-English-speaking students.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus, said the White House backed down in the face of strong opposition in the House.

The compromise agreement “either effectively delays national tests forever, or it creates such obstacles that we’re a lot better off than when we started,” she said.

Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said the delay virtually ensures that the tests will never clear Congress. “It does give us another day to battle this,” he said.

But White House officials insisted that the administration would continue to work to build support for national tests.

“I think it’s truer to say [the compromise] gives us a year in which we can really demonstrate the utility of the testing methods,” said White House spokesman Mike McCurry. “I think we’ve ended up in a place that assures us that the prospect of national standards and voluntary testing proceeds, and that, of course, is something that we think is a good thing and not a bad thing.”

Under the compromise, the independent National Academy of Sciences would conduct a study to determine whether uniform national performance standards can be derived from existing exams administered by states and commercial testing services.

Academy officials would be given until June 1, 1998, to complete the study, after which the administration would have to obtain congressional approval to proceed with development of national tests.

In addition, the National Assessment Governing Board, an independent, bipartisan panel that administers achievement tests used by schools across the nation, would be given responsibility for creation of any future national tests.

That provision is designed to appease critics of the Clinton plan who feared that Education Department bureaucrats would write the test questions and, in effect, establish a federal standard for classroom instruction.

The compromise prohibits the administration from developing, administering or field-testing national tests during the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, 1998. By then, it is assumed, Congress would have decided whether to provide funding for test development.

In addition to the testing measure, the legislation would increase spending for student financial aid, medical research and the Head Start early-learning program.

But lawmakers refused to spend additional money on new elections for Teamster leaders and declined to provide an extension of welfare benefits for women suffering from spousal abuse.

In other congressional action Friday, the Senate passed a bill that would provide the Amtrak railway $2.3 billion in federal funds for capital improvements but only if the troubled passenger line enacts a set of reforms. A similar bill was withdrawn in the House after Democrats called the reforms anti-labor and won over enough Republicans to block its passage.

“I think it’s very important that we get the fundamental reform of Amtrak so that Amtrak will have at least a chance to provide good service and do it without depending on continuing subsidies forever,” said Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.).

The bill stipulates that the money cannot be used to offset Amtrak worker demands for higher pay. A strike over that issue was averted recently, and the final details are still being negotiated.