National Testing's Pedigree
By NEAL
KUMAR KATYAL
BURLINGTON, Vt.
-- Though the Senate approved a modified
version of President
Clinton's plan for national reading and math tests
yesterday, the
battle isn't over. There is strong opposition in the
House of Representatives,
which is expected to vote next week on a
measure to block
Federal money from being used to develop such tests.
Speaker Newt
Gingrich, Republican Representative Bill Goodling of
Pennsylvania
and other conservative opponents of national testing insist that
it would be
a Federal intrusion on local control of education.
As Senator Chuck
Hagel, a Republican from Nebraska who voted against
the Senate plan,
put it, "Our Founding Fathers knew very clearly what they
were doing when
they determined that education should be a local issue."
Their argument
has some intuitive appeal. Many of us think of schools as
local institutions
financed by local property taxes. But the Federal
Government has
been involved in providing education for more than two
centuries, and
national testing is not a significant expansion of that role.
The Northwest
Ordinance, written in 1787, while the Founding Fathers
were drafting
what would become the Constitution, declared that
"knowledge,
being necessary to good government and the happiness of
mankind, schools
and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."
And Article
IV of the Constitution, which calls for a republican form of
government,
was widely viewed until the turn of the century as a Federal
guarantee of
education. During the 19th century, the Government gave
huge land grants
to townships -- more than 77 million acres -- to raise
revenue to pay
for education.
The Civil War
ultimately cemented Federal involvement in education. Many
abolitionists
described it as a "war over education" because a victory by the
North would
permit African-Americans to reap the benefits of citizenship,
including education.
After the war, the Government refused to let Southern
states -- among
them Virginia, Texas and Mississippi -- back into the Union
until they specifically
guaranteed a right to education in their state
constitutions.
The United States
Education Department was created in 1867, on the same
day that Congress
passed the first Reconstruction Act. (A separate
Education Department
was again created in the Carter years.) And the
Freedmen's Bureau
helped build more than 4,000 schools in the South from
1865 to 1877.
Even after the
end of Reconstruction, the Federal Government continued to
play a role
in education. Under Franklin D. Roosevelt's Administration, that
role was expanded
considerably; the Government spent billions of dollars
refurbishing
local schools.
It is against
this backdrop that we should evaluate President Clinton's idea
of testing students
nationwide. Such tests can hardly be described as
extensive Federal
involvement in education. For one thing, states would not
be required
to participate. And under the compromise measure that the
Senate and the
White House worked out, the tests would be overseen by
the National
Assessment Governing Board, an independent bipartisan
agency created
by Congress, rather than the Education Department.
National tests
would provide uniform standards that people could use to
assess the performance
of the schools to which they entrust their children.
And by giving
parents an objective way to measure whether their
communities'
schools are working, these tests could actually enhance local
control. National
testing is not an answer to the problems that plague
schools throughout
the country, but it's one way to hold officials
accountable.
Such tests can also help point out which schools need the most
help.
Even before we
had a Constitution, this nation had begun forging a Federal
role for education
to insure that our children have some semblance of
equality in
education. National testing is a welcome step in that direction.
Neal Kumar Katyal
is an associate professor of law at Georgetown
University.