As Clinton Touts Need for Student Testing, Murmurs of Backlash Rise

Amid signs of growing unease over the new emphasis on testing in the nation’s public schools, President Clinton on Friday said such exams are essential for propelling all schools toward greater achievement for all students.

Clinton agreed that in some cases students are burdened with too many tests and that there is a potential downside to testing if it reduces lessons to cramming to boost scores. But he also said that testing students’ progress must not be abandoned.

“You might as well not have standards if you’re not going to measure whether you’re meeting them,” Clinton said, after an address to education writers at a meeting.

Clinton said public schools have made solid progress during his administration, with more students going to college and with reading scores on the rise. But, he said, “I see no possible way to continue to reform our public schools without some form of testing and accountability.”

Forty-nine states now have academic standards and 48 have tests measuring what students know, efforts Clinton has pushed and celebrated. But critics have said the Clinton administration has not done enough to enforce rules requiring schools that receive federal aid to make sure all students are making progress toward meeting those standards.

Rep. Bill Goodling (R-Pa.) said Clinton’s “track record is marked by lost opportunities.” He said Clinton has “consistently taken a Washington-knows-best approach to dealing with education issues.”

Although Clinton has encouraged the creation of standards and tests--in part through changes to the $8-billion federal Title I program--it is states that have taken the lead. Just this week, 38 states submitted plans detailing how they planned to raise standards, attract talented teachers and recognize progress. The plans were given to Achieve Inc., a Massachusetts-based organization set up by governors and business leaders to promote academic standards.

“The standards movement is alive and well,” said Robert Schwartz, president of Achieve.

Even so, a backlash seems to be developing among some parents. As tests have grown in importance and number, parents and students in states such as Massachusetts, Virginia, Ohio and Michigan have begun to rebel.

This week several hundred students in Massachusetts boycotted that state’s tests, which in the future will be a requirement for obtaining high school diplomas. Scattered protests also have been seen in California, where some educators are urging parents to boycott the tests.

In his speech, Clinton praised the American Federation of Teachers for calling Friday for the creation of national standards and tests for those who want to become teachers. He also called on states to use their growing budget surpluses to substantially raise salaries to attract the roughly 2 million teachers needed over the next decade.

Clinton Acknowledges Possible Testing Excess

In response to a question, Clinton acknowledged that the nation’s effort to improve the quality of its public schools may be causing an overdose of testing. And he said that it may be time for a “mid-course review” of such policies.

Such tests, he said, should not “be so easy that the whole thing is a mockery and looks like a bureaucratic fraud.” But tests also should not “be so hard that it crowds out all the other endeavors that a school ought to be doing.”

Mickie Vanderwerker, a parent from Bedford, Va., who founded an organization called Parents Across Virginia to lead the anti-testing protests, told the Education Writers Assn. that high-stakes tests “are being rushed into place for political purposes without a whole lot of thought.”

She said third-graders in Virginia are expected to be able to define civilization and to have a detailed knowledge of ancient Greece and Rome, including its architecture. But to measure how much students have learned, the state’s test asks them to distinguish between three types of columns--Ionic, Doric and Corinthian. Last fall, 97% of the state’s schools failed to measure up to the standard set by the state.

“It’s wrong to do this to children,” Vanderwerker said.

The Georgia Legislature has just approved an education reform plan that calls for annual tests in reading, writing, math, science and social studies for every grade except kindergarten. If students meet goals set by a new state accountability office, their teachers will get bonuses; if they fail repeatedly, students will be allowed to transfer to a different school.

Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes, who was the chief force behind that bill, told the writers conference that the backlash against testing is coming from parents dismayed that their children are not doing as well as they would like. So, he said, they blame the tests.

Nonetheless, Barnes said, politicians must educate the public about the importance of testing.

Tests are imperfect, he said, but they are a powerful tool to show the disparities in achievement among schools and within schools.

“It’s time to do something and quit arguing if it’s a perfect test or not,” he said. “Quit whining, quit crying and do something.”