John Kline: “During the eight long years our team spent working to pass this bill, no topic was more hotly debated than that of…”

“During the eight long years our team spent working to pass this bill, no topic was more hotly debated than that of annual testing. . . In the end, we arrived at a fair and sensible compromise in the law: Keep the requirement that the same academic assessments [be] used to measure the achievement of all public elementary school and secondary school students in the state. . . [and be flexible in other areas]. . . However, Arizona and New Hampshire recently passed laws that violate ESSA by permitting individual school districts to choose which assessments to administer . . . such violations undermine ESSA in its entirety.”