Harold Berlak
Professor Emeritus: Education
Washington University
St. Louis

If NCLB testing regulations and sanctions were nullified tomorrow, we would be left with state testing laws and regulations that rest on the same faulty set of assumptions about teaching and learning, and about how to measure educational progress and achievement. Families, parents, and students need legal protection from the rampant and increasingly abusive use of standardized tests by governments, and from federal and state intrusion in curricular, pedagogical, and program decisions that properly belong in the hands of those closest to children --teachers, parents, local officials and local communities.

What we need is a 'Family and Student Testing Protection Act', a reformulated and strengthened update of legislation first proposed by Senator Wellstone seven years ago. There is little question that if the protections in his proposals were in place, we would be in a far different and better place today.

Those of us who are opposed to the current NCLB and are working politically to blunt its worst features should, and undoubtedly will carry on to press for whatever concessions we can get from this Congress and this President.

Whatever the outcome of the current NCLB reauthorization, I believe there needs to be a sustained movement for legislation at the state as well as the federal levels that protects communities, parents and students from the abuse of government power by imposing curriculum and teaching methods, and violating student and family rights to due process, fairness, and equality of educational opportunity.

I urge everyone concerned about the NCLB reauthorization to take the time to read the address delivered By Senator Wellstone at Teachers College, Columbia University, March 31, 2000