Russ Feingold: “as millions of public school students and teachers around the country settle into the new school year, I am introducing…”

“as millions of public school students and teachers around the country settle into the new school year, I am introducing a bill that would help to return a measure of local control that was taken from school districts and State educational agencies with the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act earlier this year. I strongly support maintaining local control over decisions affecting our children's day-to-day classroom experiences. I also believe that the Federal Government has an important role to play in supporting our State educational agencies and local school districts as they carry out one of their most important responsibilities, the education of our children. I voted against the recently-enacted No Child Left Behind Act in large part because of the new annual testing mandate for students in grades 3-8. While I agree that there should be a strong accountability system in place to ensure that public school students are making progress, I strongly oppose over-testing students in our public schools. I agree that some tests are needed to ensure that our children are keeping pace, but taking time to test students has to take a back seat to taking the time to teach students in the first place. I have heard a lot about these new annual tests from the people of Wisconsin, and their response has been almost universally negative.”