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Rewriting No Child Left Behind: Three Testing Issues to Watch
Politics K-12/Ed Week| 11/4/15
Behind the Headline
The 2015 EdNext Poll on School Reform
Education Next | Winter 2016
Will Congress reauthorize ESEA in the coming months? If so they’ll have to resolve a handful of disagreements related to testing.
As Alyson Klein notes on Politics K-12, “even though both the ESEA rewrite bill that passed the Senate with big, bipartisan backing, and the one that barely squeaked through the House with just GOP support, keep annual tests, they go very different ways on a lot of other assessment issues.”
Klein goes through a few of these testing issues — whether parents can opt their kids out of tests, whether school districts can choose their own tests, and how big a role tests should play in accountability — and explains where the House stands, where the Senate stands, and the pros and cons of both sides.
Klein concludes, “If lawmakers are serious about passing an ESEA rewrite bill by the end of the year, we should find out pretty soon where things ended up. “
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For a look at what the public thinks about testing and accountability and opting out and more, please read “The 2015 EdNext Poll on School Reform“
– Education Next
