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Maple River Education Coalition PAC
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May 2, 2000

Senator Grams' Statement on the Senate floor

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to discuss an amendment I will offer later to the proposed Educational Opportunities Act, to permit states to fulfill the assessment requirements of this bill by testing students at the local district level or at the classroom level, and with a nationally recognized academic test such as the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, and to provide school districts a choice of state-approved standards from which to teach their students.  This is an amendment which seeks to maintain more authority at the local level where decisions are best made.  It provides more flexibility for schools to choose their own assessments to meet state standards without losing any of the accountability needed to ensure students are achieving.

In Minnesota, the federal requirements to implement a set of state standards and accompanying state assessments have resulted in a highly controversial state content standard called the Profile of Learning.  Many parents have expressed their concern to me about the vague, indefinite nature of the Profile standards and the consequential decline of academic rigor in the classroom.  Parents also object to some of the intrusive test questions that are asked.  A poll taken a few months ago showed that only 9% of public school teachers support continuation of the Profile as it is currently written.

The students who visit my Washington office on school trips almost universally believe the time spent on fulfilling Profile requirements has shortchanged them from obtaining real, academic instruction.  Some of the assessments, entitled "performance packages" in Minnesota, can take from three to six weeks to complete, sacrificing valuable class time.  The performance packages required under the Profile are often assigned to groups of students, and inevitably some students end up pulling more of the weight than others.  It is hard to see how this group system ensures that each student is assessed based upon his or her individual performance or effort.

I won't get into many of the particulars of the Profile standards, but they unfortunately focus too much on politically fashionable outcomes, and not enough on transmitting to students a core body of knowledge.  For instance, one of the Profile "performance packages" was for a student to "violate a folkway", which means to do something odd or unexpected in a public place, and have their partner watch people and write down how they react.  I think it would be an understatement to say that a school project like that is of extremely questionable value.

The Thomas P. Fordham Foundation, which publishes a review of state standards nationwide, stated that in the English portion of the Profile "a large number of standards are not specific, measurable, or demanding".  Standards expert Dianne Ravitch wrote the following about the Profile: "I will be candid because I don't have time to be diplomatic.  In the area of social studies, the Minnesota standards are among the worst in the nation.  They are vague. They are not testable. I advise you to toss them out and start over."

A professor at one of the Minnesota state universities, describing the Profile, wrote: "the detail, the record keeping, the assessment for each individual is enough to make one's head spin.  The time that will be devoted to paperwork will, of necessity, distract teachers from planning, preparation, reflection, working with students, and other essential tasks.  I pity the poor teacher who tries to bring it off and any nonlinear-thinking student who falls victim to Minnesota-style results-based learning."

It's obvious that in Minnesota we have a real problem with our education standards.  In fact, the Minnesota House of Representatives voted last year to scrap the Profile completely, but unfortunately that bill was not adopted by the full legislature.

Our children's education's are too important to be the subject of experimentation with the latest politically correct instructional fad.  I want Minnesota students to excel and I want to make sure Minnesota school districts have a choice of standards.  I believe Minnesota will adopt new standards and assessments, if not this year then in the near future, and I want to help ensure school districts are not forced to follow a fad.

Though the Profile has not been replace, there is a strong grassroots movement toward rigorous academic standards in Minnesota which has been embodied in legislation that creates an alternative academic standard that emphasizes clear, rigorous standards, local control, and accountability to parents.  This state legislation is entitled the North Star Standard, and it is the intent of the bill sponsors to implement this standard as a local option so that local school districts can choose between the North Star Standard or the Profile.  They can stick with the new politically correct system or an academically rigorous system that allows students to learn more.  My amendment would clarify that there can be two sets of standards ad assessments from which local school districts can choose.

For districts choosing the North Star Standard, students may be assessed at the classroom or local district level, not the state level.  To ensure true accountability, the North Star Standard sets up strict reporting requirements.  Teachers would have to provide to parents a complete syllabus, information on the curriculum, homework assignments, and testing.  Thus, the parents would know what their students are learning and being tested on, protecting against the temptation to "dumb down" the tests.  While academic rigor is currently being compromised in Minnesota through a state system of standards and assessments that really aren't challenging and involve time-consuming projects that take valuable time away from classroom instruction, it would be returned through local "full disclosure" requirements to parents.  Local testing would be tied to the curriculum, and the testing would also include a nationally recognized test like the Iowa Test of Basic Skills.

The North Star Standard would also create a alternative, state-level set of academic standards that are clear, unambiguous, and present what a student should know, without dictating a specific curriculum or how teachers are to teach that body of information.  I believe this Standard is closer to what was intended under the ESEA of l994.

The theme for this reauthorization bill has been more state and local flexibility in exchange for accountability, and I believe we can maximize accountability if we leave it to local school boards and parents.  The North Star Standard is an appropriate response to the shortcomings of the state-level standards and assessments experiment in Minnesota, and I firmly believe that nothing we do here in Congress should inhibit the efforts of citizens to reform their school systems in a manner they choose, and that they know what is best for their children.  Parents are the moving force behind development of the North Star Standard.  These parents, some of which are current and former local school board members, feel passionately about the education of all children, and have carefully crafted a standard ad assessment structure that they believe, and I believe, will improve the education of Minnesota students.

Again, this amendment is designed not to create a mold for one size fits all, but to allow states to have two sets of standards and assessments and to allow a local school district and teachers the opportunity to choose their own assessment that meets the outcomes we all want.  I urge my colleagues to help my constituents restore the proud history of excellent educational achievement in the Minnesota public schools by supporting this amendment.

Please thank Senator Grams for taking leadership on this very crucial issue at this very crucial time: 

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