Going Soft in Connecticut?

Many Educommentators, including some of my educolleagues, have been protesting Connecticut's attempt to free itself of NCLB's testing requirements via the courts. It's hypocritical for a state such as Connecticut with significant achievement gaps between racial groups to try to circumvent the federal law's main mechanism for addressing such problems, they say. And they make much of the NAACP's coming to the side of U.S. Secretary of Ed Margaret Spellings in the case. The end-game, of course, is to defeat Connecticut's legal action in any way possible, for fear that a loss there would lead to lawsuits by more states and the unraveling of NCLB's requirement that states test every student in seven grades in reading and math every year, which is the key to the law's strategy for pressing educators to help needy kids.

This big-picture strategizing is understandable. I'm not going to pretend to know all the reasons why Connecticut is pressing its case in the courts. And if Connecticut ultimately loses the case, so be it. But there's one aspect of the Connecticut case that should be troubling to NCLB advocates: U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has steadfastly refused to speak up on behalf of high quality tests.

Test quality matters because what's tested is what gets taught. NCLB advocates talk a lot about the law's pursuit of high standards for all students. But a new report by Education Sector makes clear that a lack of federal funding has combined with other factors to encourage states to create tests that measure mostly low-level reading and math skills like restating facts rather than the higher-level thinking skills touted by NCLB because such tests are cheaper and quicker to produce. Education Sector calls for the feds to more than double spending on statewide testing, from $408 million this year to $860 million, to permit states to create uniformly high-quality tests.

Connecticut has used high-standards tests since the 1980s, including math questions that require students to write explanations of their answers. State officials claim that by underfunding NCLB testing, the feds are forcing Connecticut to dumb down its tests, at the expense of the very kids NCLB is designed to help.

Some NCLB defenders are saying that Connecticut is crying foul when it hasn't even spent all of its federal NCLB money. I don't know whether Conn. has spent all its money or not. And I don't really care.

My beef is that lots of states are creating lousy tests that are lowering the level of instruction in many classrooms and Spellings has been mute on the issue. Her response has been, in effect: I'm not concerned whether states create tests that promote high standards or low standards, as long as they are testing every kid every year. If you want good tests, spend the money for them yourself, she suggests.

Is that really the right message from the Secretary of Education? If she's not careful, people might start accusing her of the soft bigotry of low expectations.