Dan Coats: “I attempted to offer a compromise amendment partly because I believed, and still do, that the assessment of achieving…”

“I attempted to offer a compromise amendment partly because I believed, and still do, that the assessment of achieving reading and math standards is important information for parents, school boards, and others involved in education to make appropriate decisions about how changes should be accomplished so that we can achieve better results. There was a lot of complication with that because of the concern about the influence of the Department of Education over the design of the tests, the fact that some of this information assessment might not be accurately assessed. What I was attempting to accomplish was to give parents more knowledge so they could put more pressure on their local public schools to do a better job, to accept reforms. In many instances I was concerned because State departments of education are deceiving parents in an effort, from a political standpoint, to convince their constituents that their schools are doing just fine, that their students are doing as well as anyone. They are not administering tests, I think, or interpreting those tests in the way that gives parents adequate reflection of that. If we could structure this in a way to get an independent, outside the Department of Education test, voluntary on a State basis, it could be helpful.”