2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney (Photo: Flickr/Gage Skidmore)

Mitt Romney, the GOP presidential candidate who edged out an eight-vote victory over Rick Santorum in the Iowa caucuses, has a long track record on education that includes standardized testing and accountability, charter schools and school vouchers.

Education Week writes:

Romney has a long record and a lot of ideas on education redesign. He’s a fan of standardized testing, and has credited the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 with providing a much-needed boost to accountability. In fact, he was one of the NCLB law’s biggest champions when he ran for president back in 2008. But this year, he has also emphasized the need to step up the state role when it comes to K-12.

The No Child Left Behind Act — signed into law in January 2002 by George W. Bush and supported by the Obama administration — mandated standardized testing that evaluates teachers by score results. In late 2011, the Obama administration offered states “waivers from the most onerous requirements of No Child Left Behind.”

Public school advocates who oppose mandatory standardized testing to determine teacher salaries and state and federal funding for public schools have called for a National Opt Out Day on Jan. 7.

Romney, according to Education Week, “also complimented President Barack Obama’s signature education reform program—Race to the Top—saying the program “had done some good things.”

Race to the Top, “a competitive grant program,” was launched by the Obama administration in 2009 to “encourage and reward States that are creating the conditions for education innovation and reform.”

The program provides funds to states that reform education in four areas: adopting standards and assessments that prepare students for work and college; building data systems that measure student growth and success; recruiting, training, rewarding and retaining effective teachers and principals; and turning around the lowest achieving schools.

Education Week adds that Romney has “called for getting rid of teacher salary schedules, but said he’d like to pay beginning teachers more. He also waded into the culture wars, saying he thinks students should be taught about the advantages of marriage.”

Education News reported last September that Romney also supports charters schools, school vouchers and “currently supports the federal government’s involvement in education and would keep in place the No Child Left Behind act created under President Bush in 2001.”

DES MOINES — A bill approved by the U.S. Senate’s education committee will replace No Child Left Behind with legislation that’s less “prescriptive and punitive” and allows school districts more freedom in deciding how best to educate and evaluate children, says U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Cumming).

Harkin, the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, presented the bill to educators and members of the press at the Downtown School in Des Moines on Friday. The Elementary and Secondary Education Reauthorization Act of 2011 is the first such reauthorization since No Child Left Behind was enacted in 2001.

Tom Harkin

“We are entering a new era of a partnership between the federal government, the state and local school districts,” Harkin said.

NCLB did some good things, Harkin said, like disaggragating data and focusing on achievement of subgroups. But overall it “tried to do too many things,” while this bill aims to do fewer things and do them better.

“Rather than covering all schools we have left it back to the states within certain parameters to set up their accountability systems and performance targets, and yes, to set up teacher and principal evaluation systems,” Harkin said.

Nancy Sebring, the superintendent of Des Moines Public Schools, praised NCLB for improving schools’ focus on under-served children. But she also said the law has had other consequences “that were not very productive for schools.”

“There were punitive measures that were embedded in the act that in some cases demoralized our teachers, in some cases inappropriately punished our schools and the people in them and the children in them for not being successful,” Sebring said. “We know that that kind of aspect of the law has been somewhat damaging to public schools.”

Under the bill, the federal government will focus on helping the bottom 5 percent of schools in each state and addressing achievement gaps. It also eliminates “adequate yearly progress” requirements and federal sanctions that create pressure to teach to tests.

Harkin said the bill also puts more power into the hands of states and school districts to prepare students for college and a career, and promotes arts, music and physical education.

“There’s no one specific way of teaching kids that’s better than every other possible way,” Harkin said. “It varies, and we learn new things as we experiment and try different things. So we want local school districts to have the freedom to try different methodologies of teaching, to give them the freedom to do that.”

Harkin said the bill is unlikely to be debated by the full Senate until next year, but he’s hopeful it will pass the Senate and the U.S. House will come up with a similar effort. The Senate’s version passed out of committee with bipartisan support.

Several GOP presidential candidates have called for eliminating the department, including U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Others have called for at least weakening it.

Tom Harkin

“How much it’s involved and how it’s involved is open for debate obviously, that’s open for discussion,” Harkin said of the department. “But to say that the federal government has no role in elementary, secondary education, or any education is just nonsense. We have a role, we have a very important role to play.”

Harkin said since the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 there’s been an expression of the federal government having a role in education of the territories, and even suggested the preamble of the U.S. Constitution calls for the federal government being involved in education.

“I submit to you that you can’t promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty without education,” Harkin said.

He also said the United States is “still one nation,” and every state and district has an interest in making sure children don’t fall through the cracks.

“A child who’s ill-educated in one state may not just be a burden in that state, that child can move to Iowa or Nebraska or Minnesota, you get my point,” Harkin said. “So we have a national interest in this from that standpoint.”

But Harkin, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, was quick to acknowledge there is a division in Congress and among the American people about the role of the federal government in education.

He said his committee has had that debate over the last year as they’ve worked on the Elementary and Secondary Education Reauthorization Act of 2011, which was just approved out of committee on a bipartisan vote.

“That’s fine, but that doesn’t mean they’re irrevocable differences,” Harkin said. “It just means we have to get together and try to find a meeting ground, a common ground on which we can move forward, and I believe we’ve done that in this bill.”

That bill largely does away with No Child Left Behind, Harkin said, a controversial act passed in 2001. Harkin made the comments during a tour of the Des Moines Public Schools’ Downtown School on Friday morning.

Screen Caption of Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) during ESEA hearing on HELP Committee

Though expected by Senate watchers to be a sideshow and forum for Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to voice his criticism of the nation’s top education bill, the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing today instead crystallized key provisions of the legislation meant to replace No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

That the hearing was held at all is unusual, since the bill up for discussion was voted out of committee  in October by a vote of 15-7. But an agreement was struck between Paul and committee chair Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) to allow the Kentucky senator to learn more about the language of the bill under the condition he drop over 70 amendments proposed in an attempt to slow down its passage.

And while the co-writers of replacement bill, known as Harkin-Enzi, voted to push it out of committee in a bi-partisan fashion, both would like to see more added.

“This bill is not Mr. Enzi’s bill, and it ain’t mine either,” said Harkin. While Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) told the audience, “It is important to note that I do not support 100 percent of the bill we reported out.  I would have supported a much smaller federal role and far fewer federal programs.”

Witnesses were invited to participate in the round table discussion without prepared remarks, a more informal hearing than is typical of Senate meetings. Senators were also invited to ask questions, with much of the dialogue focusing on tracking teachers and their pay, improving student performance, and addressing high-needs pupils like those with disabilities and limited language skills.

Tom Luna, Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction, said the current bill “has kept the good parts of No Child Left Behind.” He likened the 2002 law to the film The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, – with the emphasis on data-collection showing the good, while the federal government prescribing benchmarks and end goals representing the ugly.

He stressed a state’s right to set up its own education accountability measures was a 10th Amendment issue, and in moving away from NCLB, Idaho is “more than willing and ready to hold ourselves to higher level of accountability.”

Still, with many state budgets squeezed, federal largesse helps programs targeting high-needs students stay afloat. But with that financial support comes expectations states will live up to standards articulated at the federal level. That reality prompted Charles Seaton, a teacher at Memphis City Schools in Tennessee, to tell the senators, “We need your money.”

Harkin-Enzi disavows most of the performance targets schools were forced to meet under NCLB mandates, known as Adequate Yearly Progress, or face consequences, and instead focuses on the worst five percent of schools per district.

Pam Geisselhardt, a gifted and talented coordinator at Adair County Schools in Kentucky, welcomes the increased state control of monitoring student output. “The term NCLB is demoralizing for us at this point…testing, testing, testing…we have no time to teach.”

But accessing a rich data set on student learning is important, the other panelists said. “Everyone says we assess too much,” quipped Amanda Danks, a lead teacher in Baltimore who works with special education students. “We assess ineffectively too much.”

Danks’ comment was reiterated by a few of the national thinkers on the panel.

Rick Hess, an education policy analyst at American Enterprise Institute, said, “It is not useful to try to prescribe models” unless they pertain to the lowest five percent of schools. And Luna, a critic of federal involvement in local education, said he would not oppose federally mandated teacher evaluations but would see a problem if the “federal government tries to define it or regulate it.”

Special education took up a significant portion of the two and a half hour hearing, but was limited to matters of assessment, as well, with some senators and panelists arguing allowing more students with disabilities to receive alternative assessments would demoralize the students.

Harkin-Enzi puts a cap on the number of students who could qualify for alternative assessments as one percent — a point of frustration for low-performing schools with many high-needs students whose test scores would factor into the school’s overall performance.

Perhaps the bill’s harshest critic on the panel is Wade Henderson, President and CEO of  The Leadership Conference. “We must look at our history: states have achieved what they have because of the federal role, not in spite of it,” he said. Countering Sen. Paul’s assessment of the hearing, Henderson argued federal involvement is not a philosophical question, but a “practical debate affecting real-live students.”

Groups as politically divided as The National Council of La Raza and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce side with Henderson. In a letter released today, nearly 30 organizations that seek greater accountability standards for students and teachers said they do not support Harkin-Enzi.

From the statement:

Federal funding must be attached to firm, ambitious and unequivocal demands for higher achievement, high school graduation rates and gap closing. We know that states, school districts, and schools needed a more modern and focused law. However, we respectfully believe that the bill goes too far in providing flexibility by marginalizing the focus on the achievement of disadvantaged students.

Last month, President Obama unveiled his plan to grant states waivers from No Child Left Behind, putting pressure on congress to come up with a reauthorization of the 2002 law, which has been due for overhaul since 2007. Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), the chair of the House education committee, has stated he prefers to augment the nation’s top K-12 law with smaller bills.

States have seen the need for improvement in education, the opinion reads, and so have pushed forward with Core Curriculum State Standards.

“It is why our two states — along with more than 40 others — developed and adopted the Common Core State Standards in the past two years. It is also why — irrespective of what may or may not be happening in Washington — we are pushing ahead with implementation of these standards,” the op-ed reads.

Branstad set a campaign goal of making Iowa first in the nation for education, and is pushing to change the way students are evaluated and teachers are paid in the state. He’s called for the creation of a tiered pay system for teachers and end-of-course exams for high school students, among other things.

Of the 13 sixth-grade girls asked to explain why they want to take part in an Alexandria, Virginia-based after-school program called SOHO, Katherine Ivette Cuellar Moreno was the only one who typed her response. The rest were hand-written, and one was submitted in pencil.

Moreno, like the other girls, then participated in a trial session for one day where she had to display her enthusiasm to take part in the program for the rest of the school year. While meant to help students in need, the kids need to demonstrate they want the help.

SOHO stands for Space of Her Own, a joint venture between the local Court Service Unit and the non-profit Art League. The program meets once a week, and has two locations in Alexandria and one in Richmond. Depending on the location, fifth- or sixth-grade girls are paired with a mentor and an art instructor.

“First of all I LOVE to make things with my hands and i look for things to make i have made a crane, a heart, a wallet, a heart bracelet, and a gift box,” writes Moreno.

“I love to do things that are outdoors and I have never learned how to ride a bike and I am excited because i love to learn about new things even phisical things.”

The after-school sessions in Alexandria are also small in number — each site enrolls 11 girls.

From around 3 p.m. to 8 p.m, the pre-teens have a fixed schedule of completing homework assignments, enjoying a healthy meal and learning about proper nutrition. The girls meet with their female mentors and talk about school, personal aspirations and help mending through the anxieties of late adolescence. Afterwards, the girl and her mentor meet with a volunteer artist who helps the student work on art projects that will eventually appear in her bedroom. Colorful wall-mounted collages, intricate and bright tapestries hanging over the window sill, and other crafts projects to spruce up usually-drab bedrooms are worked on throughout the school year.

Amy Cable, a social studies teacher and the director of a SOHO site at Hammond Middle School in Alexandria, says the point is to target an at-risk population. “It could be that they’ve been deemed girls who are in need of an adult female mentor,” she said. “We get a referral from guidance counselors or principals” for those who need additional attention, said Cable in an interview with The American Independent.

Hammond is Title I eligible, but the superintendent of the district chose not to participate in the federal program that offers poor districts additional dollar assistance. Still, the girls at SOHO must be eligible to receive free and reduced lunch — a government subsidy for students of low-income households.

Prime Time for Juvenile Crime

Many after-school programs focus on low-income students who need a safe haven from their poverty-stricken and often chaotic neighborhoods. The troubles that plague these kids can be gritty, and the hours between when a child gets out of school to when the parents come home are called Prime Time for Juvenile Crime for a reason.

These principally state-funded activities are part of a nexus of tools in play that combine a focus on academics and lifestyle improvements for young children that are long lasting.

TAI has taken in-depth looks at extended classroom learning throughout the year and summer learning initiatives that fuse academics with outdoor activities. While similar to these additional learning projects, after-school programs go beyond learning and offer enrichment services to complement a child’s regular time in the classroom by “trying to address [their] academic, social, and emotional needs,” according to Cable.

That wide-ranging goal to touch the girls’ lives in manifold ways resonates with the mentees.

“Having a mentor who will help you, talk to you. Have a friend that is older than you, that has experience in life. Someone that bonds with me shares ideas. Tells me tips of how to be non-shy,” writes Melanie P., another sixth-grade Alexandria student hoping to enter the program. “My mom also suggested that I should get in this program cause it will keep my mind occupied in something.”

Although unique in its approach, SOHO is not alone in scope. As it stands, many students are left to their own devices when classes end for the day; according to the Afterschool Alliance, 24 percent of K-12 youth in California are responsible for entertaining themselves in the late afternoon and early evening. That percentage is consistent nationally, affecting some 15 million students.

Interestingly, research from the Alliance shows that 26 percent of students who qualify for free and reduced lunch are by themselves after school. The rate is higher for students who don’t qualify for the federal lunch subsidy—29 percent.

Jen Rinehart, vice president of research and policy for Afterschool Alliance, says the counterintuitive set of percentages is the result of “wealthier households…able to put together a variety of activity for kids, like soccer practice or guitar. They’re putting together their own activities,” she said.

Of course funding is an issue, in no small part because only one federal program exists in allocating dollars for before- and after-school programs — the 21^st Century Community Learning Center. It was passed during the Clinton administration, with the bipartisan support under a Republican-controlled Congress, but money earmarked for the federal set of formula grants is just over $1 billion.

“There are many more kids who would participate, says Rinehart, “but when a state runs a [grant] competition, they’re able to fund only one in four requests that come in.”

After-school programs are shown to be successful

One after-school program in Chicago, called Project Exploration, offers science, technology and math services to students in the under-performing district. Still, according to a University of California at Berkeley study, students passing through Project Exploration graduated high school at nearly twice the rate — 95 percent – compared to other Chicago public school students.

The largest after-school non-profit in California is called LA’s BEST, and operates in over 180 campuses serving 28,000 students in the City of Los Angeles through the local school district.

In 2005, a University of California, Los Angeles study determined active participation in the program among students leads to a 20 percent decline in the likelihood a child will drop out of high school. Since LA’s BEST works with elementary school students, the program’s effect is felt long after a child moves on to higher grade levels.

The renowned research university’s interest in LA’s BEST lends the after-school non-profit some gravitas. Cable of Alexandria said SOHO is also moving towards more long-term data collection. “Tracking the girls is challenging. A number of girls who [we mentored] are no longer in Alexandria,” and looking at court lists to cross reference former mentees is a difficult process, said Cable.

In another 2007 study examining LA’s BEST, UCLA concluded participation in the program decreases a child’s chance of getting caught up in juvenile crime by 30 percent.

Catherine Stringer, vice president of communications and public affairs for LA’s BEST, says on average, 90 percent of the students they serve qualify for free and reduced lunches. According to her, LA’s BEST won’t enter a campus where the rate is below 70 percent.

Some 75 percent of LA BEST’s funding comes from a mix of federal, local and state dollars, with the rest made up of donations. Of all the public contributions, a California state expenditure called ASES contributes most significantly to LA BEST’s budget.

Stringer chalks up the success of LA’s Best to their staffing during in an interview with TAI. “We attribute it to a community based staff,” she said. The after-school personnel is by and large made up of college students from the local neighborhoods earning degrees in education, child development or social work. “They make connections and engage in such a way that students are getting the most of what they can out of it,” said Stringer.

The learning experience is a cognitive one: using a framework called three-and-a-half beats, the late afternoon and early evening hours these elementary students spend at LA’s BEST are dedicated to homework help, sound nutrition, athletics and other enrichment activities.

Just like at SOHO, the snacks are nutritious, and lessons are designed around education children on the merits of healthy eating. Both Cable and Stringer mentioned rising rates of child obesity as a determining factor in filling in part of the children’s day with lessons on sound nutrition.

Meanwhile, the cognitive exercises focus on learning activities that add to, but do not repeat, the instruction they received while in class.

“We’re viewing kids as individuals to be developed, not problems to be solved,” said Stringer.

More recent positive press for LA’s BEST points to the organization’s role in upping test scores: as participants move on to the middle school level, their standardized test scores in the major subjects improves. Students are also more likely to take algebra in the eighth grade when most students enter a year later.

Scarce funding compromised

“The first goal of getting kids to improve is to have them show up to class,” says Rinehart of Afterschool Alliance. By making these after-school programs fun, engaging and led by adults the kids can relate to, there’s an incentive to show up to class just to take part in the after-school services that come later.

Pressed for a legislative fix, Rinehart said what worries her recently is a congressional and White House drive to use dollars earmarked for after-school programs for expanded learning time and summer learning programs. That’s a possible reality following new language to the just-proposed bill to replace No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and in the Obama Administration’s waiver process so states can opt out of NCLB.

“We oppose this,” said Rinehart. “Longer school days should be done well and shouldn’t come at expense of proven services that are valuable for kids and families.”

The Educational Policy Improvement Center, the research center that released the study, selected (.pdf) comparison standards from California, Massachusetts and Texas, as well as the Knowledge and Skills for University Success and the International Baccalaureate program.

The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a state-led effort coordinated by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers for K-12 education.

The Standards Initiative helps “teachers ensure their students have the skills and knowledge” in “postsecondary education and the workforce,” and is not “the first step toward nationalizing education.”

As of October, 44 states have adopted the common core standards. The Florida Department of Education approved the adoption of the Common Core State Standards for English/Language Arts and Mathematics in July 2010.

The Florida Education Association — the union that represents teachers and school support professionals — writes that “the standards, developed in collaboration with teachers, school administrators, and education experts, establish clear and consistent goals for learning that will prepare our children for college and the workforce.”

According to Education Week, the study

comes on the coattails of an increasing push at the federal level to ensure students are leaving high school ready for college. The Obama administration’s recent waiver plan for the No Child Left Behind Act frees states from some of the law’s accountability requirements if they adopt standards for college and career readiness. A bill to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, whose current version is the NCLB law, also makes that a priority.

David T. Conley, lead researcher on the report, told the publication: “There’s a big danger if you look at these standards as everything you need to know to be ready because it’s not. If you think they’re the perfect measure, they’re not.”

Conley added: “The common-core standards are a step in the right direction, but we still need more information on what makes a student college- and career-ready and still have a way to go toward creating stronger standards and assessments than [evaluating a student] by a cut score on a test.”

The legislation, Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), was proposed by the two leading Democrat and Republican Senators in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee and articulated many of the terms and conditions states must honor to receive federal education dollars. On average, federal funds for schools amount to a tenth of total school budgets.

In his role as a sitting member of the HELP Committee, Sen. Bingaman successfully proposed an amendment that reauthorizes an educational technology grant program geared towards improving student learning. The Technology and Innovation (ATTAIN) Act of 2011 within the proposed bill would award funds to schools for increased technological literacy among students. It would also train teachers to better understand the digital tools available to them.

Funds will be distributed through an application-based process, and states will have to demonstrate teachers and librarians have the skills to use the technology services.

As written in the amendment, the goal for this measure is to raise student achievement, ensure highly effective teaching, and prepare all students so they can be on track to “college and career readiness for the 21 century digital economy.”

ATTAIN was earlier proposed as a standalone piece of legislation with two other Democratic Senators. A summary of that legislation can be found here.

President Johnson originally passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965. NCLB is its current iteration, passed in 2002 by President Bush. Congress was supposed to reauthorize the law in 2007 but did not.  In recent months educators and local administrators called for the law to change, citing impossible performance targets and an over emphasis on standardized testing.

President Obama unveiled a series of waivers states could apply for to opt out of NCLB — a move that upset many  Republicans. The current ESEA bill needs to pass before early next year if Congress hopes to nullify the role of those waivers, which are set to take off in January.

Some 20 amendments were approved during the process, which ended just before 9 pm Thursday, including ones with language on principal training, loosening restrictions on teaching oral traditions in Native American or indigenous school areas, and low-income student access to early college high schools.

Some notable amendments were not passed, including Sen. Rand Paul’s curious proposal to repeal No Child Left Behind — even though the bill in question seeks to effectively accomplish that end goal.

Committee chair Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) praised the proceedings. “Tonight is a victory – both for our nation’s children and for bipartisanship,”he said. “After more than two years of hearings, debate, and negotiations, the HELP Committee has come together in a bipartisan way to approve comprehensive legislation to improve education for our nation’s children.

“This bill will ensure that students graduate from school ready for college and careers and focus federal resources where they will be most effective. It will replace punitive sanctions and labels with supports for teaching and learning, increase flexibility for innovation on the local level, and distribute resources equitably to ensure a top-notch education for every American student.”

Indeed, a handful of Republican measures were taken up in the Democratic-controlled committee.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) successfully introduced an amendment offering more school choice options to low-income students enrolled at persistently failing schools.

Another, by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), clarified language on formula funding, an often contentious topic as a few percentage points can make a big difference in how much federal funding states can receive. Sen. Harkin quipped, “formula fights are always bad,” but the North Carolina Senator said his new language for Title II of the Elementary And Secondary Education Act would allow the section’s $3 billion in allotments to be “distributed equally.”

Title II of the ESEA supports state- and district-level efforts to improve teacher quality and instruction.

And Sen. Lisa Murkowksi (R-Alaska) managed to successfully introduce language mostly specific to Alaska in two amendments.

One of these amendments is discussed by TAI here, while the other addresses rural school districts in the state that have difficulty finding highly qualified teachers. Her amendment permits a form of distance learning provided that the off-site teacher is highly qualified and is in charge of the lesson plan.

Still, despite ranking member Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) voting for the final version of the bill, he said in a statement the “markup of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was an important first step, but we still have a lot of work to do when the bill reaches the floor of the Senate.

Sens. Alexander and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) were the two others to vote with the majority.

In general, the bill moves away from some of NCLB’s benchmark requirements, instead seeking to prod states towards more efficient oversight measures, data collection technology, and monitoring systems.

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) sponsored or co-sponsored three amendments. One included language similar language to a principal and teacher preparedness bill he introduced with Sens. Alexander and Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) called the GREAT Act that was endorsed by reform-minded education groups like Teach for America, New Schools for New Orleans, and the Charter School Growth Fund. The amendment places greater emphasis on selection criteria for instructor training academies and would rate academies based on how well its graduates improved student performance. The program, according to the amendment, is voluntary.

Another little item was an amendment that would expand federal research under a program similar to ARPA-ED. While conservatives worry this could centralize education reform and create a “National School Board”— one of the most used terms throughout the markup process — the Obama administration touts it as harnessing the research energy of public facilities to improve student learning.

Education policy Rick Hess of conservative American Enterprise Institute stands behind the basic premise of the amendment.

Throughout the discussions, the theme of the role of the federal government in local education cropped up — specifically, whether an authority that introduces a tenth of the funding towards school budgets can mandate too heavily how states should govern. Conservatives on the committee argued the ESEA bill still imposes itself too much, while more liberal members maintained federal money is voluntary, and states can opt out if they do not want the money.Of course, most states are financially strapped and rely on federal dollars to help pay for crucial items like textbooks and additional resources for high-need students.

The committee is slated to convene in early November. Even as the bill is now ready to head to the full Senate floor, leadership honored Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) request for a hearing in exchange for his support of the markup process.

His amendment, one of a handful passed so far by the HELP Committee as it undergoes a markup of the sweeping K-12 education bill authored by leading sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), would lift the restrictions currently in place that bar states from testing students based on their current skill level.

Just like the higher education entrance assessment the GRE, Sen. Franken’s amendment opens the door for states to use Computer Adaptive Testing (CAT), software that increases or decreases the difficulty of questions based on the test taker’s response. Present state efforts, like Oregon’s, to incorporate CAT have been stymied since current law views such methods as introducing questions not on level with the content skills of middle of the road students.

“I’ve traveled all over Minnesota and heard from principals, teachers, and administrators who say they need a better way to measure the growth of their students, because the current testing system just isn’t working,”  Sen. Franken told TAI in an e-mail.

CAT methods of student assessment, Franken said, can assist teachers in identifying a student’s strengths and weaknesses in real time, since results for the tests are generated immediately. He described the current testing standard — states issuing exams and receiving results months later — as an “autopsy” of student skill-level rather than an evaluation.

“When the results finally come back, it’s too late to do anything for students who are failing, said Franken to TAI. “Computer adaptive testing gives our teachers the tools and information they need to help our kids succeed in the classroom. I’m pleased that my provision was approved during the HELP committee markup this afternoon.”

Frequent criticism of the assessments borne out of the No Child Left Behind era is that they focus on getting students up to speed on a certain level of proficiency.

During the markup, Franken said of the few things he liked about No Child Left Behind was its name. “Well you’re leaving that kid behind, you’re leaving this kid behind,” he added.

A fact sheet e-mailed to The American Independent by Franken’s staff included the following analysis of assessments:

Fixed form tests allow students who are high-performing to look good all year with out much effort and struggling students who work and grow dramatically to still be counted as under-performers. Students and teachers are not accurately assessed and evaluated, and it makes it more likely that these students will not get adequate attention from teachers.

The amendment clearly states that a CAT evaluation method is not mandatory.

The reliance on technology has been one of the prevailing themes of the current markup session to reauthorize ESEA, the 1965 law passed by the Johnson administration that outlines the federal government’s role in education spending.

Computer systems were presented as solutions for creating cross-tabulation systems that would determine the performance of a subset of student groups, like African American females, and monitoring the matriculation of eighth graders to better understand high school drop out rates.