Dan Coats: “we are debating, here, under this limited time agreement, an issue that has received considerable discussion. There is…”

“we are debating, here, under this limited time agreement, an issue that has received considerable discussion. There is considerable controversy over the issue of national testing. It has received enormous attention. When the issue was first raised in the context of this appropriations bill, Senator Gregg and I offered an amendment expressing our concern that we were going forward, here, with an issue of considerable controversy, without it being authorized and without hearings and without discussion as to the implications of this. We felt it deserved a full public discussion because there was great controversy over the idea of national testing. Unfortunately, the decision that was made on the part of the administration was to go forward with this initiative without congressional authorization. We attempted to address that issue with our amendment. But last August, without congressional approval or statutory authority, the Department of Education announced that it would develop a national test to be implemented in the spring of 1999, and went forward and awarded a $13 million contract to a consortium of testing companies. Instead of turning the proposed test program over to the National Assessment Governing Board, an entity with 10 years of experience in this area, the administration intended to bypass this procedure.”