In the opening bid to reauthorize the federal K-12 education law, No Child Left Behind, the Senate education committee took up the divisive issue of testing, in which the overwhelming recommendation to the committee was to maintain the current law’s annual-testing regimen.
In fact, only two of the six witnesses who testified at Wednesday’s hearing recommended eliminating the federally mandated testing schedule. Both are teachers in the New York City school system.
The hearing is the first in a series that will take on the biggest policy issues involved in overhauling the NCLB law—and so far, testing has turned out to be the chief boogeyman.
Indeed, after two-and-a-half hours of testimony from a diverse panel of witnesses, chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., still hadn’t come down on one side of the testing coin.
