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Guest Commentary: August 21, 2001
Education Bill Must Not Mask Real Failure
The Honorable George Miller
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Iam pleased that the President is taking a leadership role on important but contentious education policy issues. The four issues he addressed [at a speech to the Urban League, August 1, 2001] are the subject of intense political debate and we will need his continued commitment to resolve them successfully.
I strongly agree with the President that our final education reform bill should require the use of the standardized NAEP test as a national benchmark to adequately assess the progress students in each state are making. And I agree that states should develop their own annual tests that must be comparable. If we allow a jumble of tests within a state, we will never achieve our goal of knowing how each child is doing.
I also agree with the President that we should target resources to the lowest performing schools. But I strongly believe that we must not create a system that masks real failure.
On the 1998 NAEP 4th grade reading test, 65 percent of black children were not proficient at reading. We cannot define most schools as successful when most black children do not read at a proficient level on a test that the President himself believes is reliable.
Just as we should not over-identify failure, we must not over-assert success; pretending that failing schools are something else has produced the education crisis this legislation seeks to solve.
I also strongly agree with the that President "money without reform, is fruitless." However, reform without adequate funding is cruelty and I will press the President very hard to ensure that our final bill is adequately funded.
Our mutual goal is help all school children -- poor and rich, minority and non-minority. It is in no one’s interest to mask real failure or to underfund reform and we should not allow our final bill to do that.
Note: The above commentary is adpated from a statement Representative Miller issued on August 1, 2001.
 How to contact Representative George Miller (D-CA)
Reading a past guest commentary? Click here for the most current one.
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