Education Week - October 15, 2014 - 16

GOVERNMENT & POLITICS
Likely Leadership Options
For Senate Education Panel
No matter which party comes out ahead in the Nov. 4 congressional elections,
the U.S. Senate's Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee will have
a new leader. Should Republicans take control of the chamber, Sen.
Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., currently the ranking member on the
education panel, will take the reins and has openly discussed his
priorities for the committee. Should Democrats maintain their
majority, political observers, education policy experts, and Senate aides
widely expect Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., to succeed retiring Chairman Tom
Harkin, D-Iowa-though Sen. Murray, who now chairs the Budget Committee,
has been adamant about not projecting her future moves. Here's a look at the
education credentials and priorities of the two most likely candidates to head up
the Senate education committee in the 114th Congress.
By Lauren Camera
SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER, R-TENN.
Sen. Lamar Alexander has been a fixture
of conservative politics and education policy
for nearly four decades, consistently leading
his party on education issues since his election
to the Senate in 2002 and most recently
using his bully pulpit to slam the Obama administration
for what he considers federal
overreach.
When he was elected to the first of two
terms as Tennessee governor in 1979-
gaining national attention after traversing
the state on foot in his now trademark redand-black-plaid
shirt-the Republican set out
to overhaul the Volunteer State's teacher profession.
The
measure, which finally passed in 1984,
fundamentally altered the teaching profession
in the state's public schools. It instituted
teacher-evaluation and differentiated-pay
systems and created "career ladders" for
teachers-policies some states are just now
beginning to implement and others have yet
to tackle.
The legislative push established Sen. Alexander
as a foe of teachers' unions. But in
2013, his Senate office teamed up with the
unions during a committee markup to overhaul
the No Child Left Behind Act: They
worked to defeat language that would have
required states to adopt new teacher evaluations
and lobbied to include language that
would alter acceptable school turnaround
models.
Defining the Federal Role
It was also during his governorship that
Sen. Alexander developed his "grand bargain"
theory, a proposal that calls for the
federal government to assume all financial
responsibility for states' Medicaid healthcare
programs in exchange for states financing
all education programs. He recently
Sen. Lamar
Alexander, R-Tenn.,
has been critical of
what he considers
the Obama
administration's
policy overreach on
education, but he
is also seen as a
pragmatic legislator
as ranking member
of the Senate
education
committee.
dusted off the proposal when Congress reset
federal student-loan interest rates in summer
2013, arguing that skyrocketing college
costs are a direct result of states siphoning
funds from higher education programs because
of increased Medicaid costs.
After his eight-year tenure as governor,
Sen. Alexander headed up Tennessee's state
university system before joining former President
George H.W. Bush's Cabinet as education
secretary in 1991. During that time, he
focused largely on school choice issues-he
proposed a controversial program that would
have given parents federal funds to help pay
tuition at private schools-workforce-training
programs, and adult education. He also
backed a policy that declared most scholarships
based on race to be illegal.
It wasn't until after pursuing two failed
presidential bids, in 1996 and 2000, that
Slow-Building Push to Limit Federal Test Mandates Gains Steam
By Alyson Klein
For more than a decade, teachers,
administrators, students, and even
parents have criticized the No Child
Left Behind Act -and, now, the Obama
administration's waivers under that
law-for giving too much weight to
standardized testing and forcing students
to take too many exams.
That critique hasn't gotten very
far in Washington. But there are
signs that the movement to limit the
number of federally mandated tests
students take may be gaining momentum-and
it could pick up more
steam as the Obama administration
draws to a close and the 2016 presidential
election begins in earnest.
Proposals to cut down on the
number of assessments of students
include fairly dramatic departures
from the NCLB regime, such as legislation
in Congress backed by teachers'
unions that would allow states
to give summative tests in math and
English/language arts only in certain
grade spans. They also include morelimited,
deliberately constructed approaches
taking shape in individual
states.
For instance, New Hampshire is
in talks with the U.S. Department of
Education about establishing a pilot
program that would allow a handful
of districts to take the state's summative
assessment only in certain
grades, provided that those districts
offer local "competency-based" tests,
which gauge whether students have
mastered a particular skill. The local
tests would then be "mapped back" to
the state exam.
The Council of Chief State School
Officers is interested in working
with the department to explore pilot
projects along the lines of what the
Granite State is considering, said
Carissa Miller, the deputy executive
director of the CCSSO.
"We support kids and teachers and
parents getting information every
year," she said. "We're open to the idea
that there are states who want to pilot
something" different as long as they
continue to test kids every year.
Rhetorical Shift
Also, in Connecticut, Gov. Dannel
P. Malloy, a Democrat, last month
wrote a letter to U.S. Secretary of
Education Arne Duncan, saying he
would like to "start a dialogue" between
the Obama administration
and his state on ways to "reduce the
testing burden."
The Nutmeg State is mulling allowing
11th graders to take the SAT
college-entrance exam during the
school day, in lieu of the high school
exam aligned with the Common Core
State Standards and developed by
the federally funded Smarter Balanced
consortium. That would cut
down on the number of exams "overtested"
high school juniors have to
take, he said.
16 | EDUCATION WEEK | October 15, 2014 | www.edweek.org
The idea of using a college-entrance
exam for accountability purposes isn't
new-some states including Maine
and Kentucky use the SAT or ACT in
gauging schools' progress-but Mr.
Malloy cites it as a way to cut down
on the number of tests.
Mr. Malloy was inspired, he wrote
in the letter, by a blog post that Secretary
Duncan authored in August,
announcing the department's decision
to allow states with NCLB waivers
to delay incorporating the results
of standardized tests into teacher
evaluations for one year.
In that post, Mr. Duncan said he
shared teachers' concerns that "testing-and
test preparation-takes up
too much time," a line Gov. Malloy
quoted in his letter.
The blog post was something of a
departure for Mr. Duncan. During
President Barack Obama's first term,
the Education Department showed
no signs of letting up on the requirement
that states test students in
grades 3 through 8 and once in high
school, as required by the NCLB law.
In fact, the administration arguably
doubled down on testing, by calling
for states to incorporate student
outcomes on state tests into teacher
evaluations to an NCLB waiver.
The argument for less frequent testing
has gotten a sympathetic hearing
from some lawmakers in Congress.
A bill introduced in March by Reps.
Chris Gibson, R-N.Y, and Kyrsten
Sinema, D-Ariz., would let states
test students in certain grade spans,
instead of in reading and math in
grades 3 through 8 and once in high
school. That would reduce the number
of federally mandated standardized
tests from 14 to six.
And a bill by Rep. Steve Israel,
D-N.Y., introduced last month,
would require students in grades 3
through 8 to take only one test per
year, instead of two. Under the legislation,
reading tests would be given
in grades 3, 5, and 7, and math in
grades 4, 6, and 8.
Staggering the Tests
Such so-called "staggered testing,"
or "grade span" testing, has strong
backing from teachers' unions.
"It's about giving teachers more
time to teach the kids who are most
in need," said Mary Kusler, the director
of government relations for the
National Education Association, a
3 million-member union.
Education analysts including Marc
Tucker, the president of the National
Center on Education and the
Economy, a research organization in
Washington, have argued that higherperforming
countries, such as Finland,
don't test their students every year,
and that tests can be of higher quality
if they are given less frequently. (Mr.
Tucker also writes an opinion blog for
Education Week.)
But there are some big downsides
to less-than-annual state summative
testing, said Sandy Kress, an
education policy adviser to President
George W. Bush during the development
of the NCLB law, who is now a
senior counsel at Akin Gump, a law
firm with offices around the globe.
For one thing, locally developed assessments
generally don't have the
same objectivity as state tests, making
it a lot tougher to measure student
growth from year-to-year, he said.
And schools will sometimes use
staggered testing to game the system,
Mr. Kress said, putting all of
their most-effective teachers in the
tested grades, for example.
"I think the net effect of [staggered
testing] is to make fair and sophisticated
accountability impossible," he
said.
So far, the idea has yet to make it
into any major piece of legislation
aimed at reauthorizing the NCLB law.
The issue could become more
prominent as the 2016 presidential
campaign draws near.
Recently, former President Bill
Clinton said he would be in favor
of fewer tests-perhaps once in elementary
school, once in middle
school, and once in high school. That
testing regime is "quite enough if you
do it right," Mr. Clinton said, according
to the Huffington Post.
Mr. Clinton's remarks pack a political
punch: His wife, Hillary Clinton,
is considered a likely candidate for
the Democratic presidential nomination
in 2016.
Carolyn Kaster/AP-File
2014
ELECTION
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Education Week - October 15, 2014

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