Lily Eskelsen Garcia, president of the National Education Association, blames both Republicans and Democrats for excessive standardized testing. In an interview with NPR, she said, “I don’t care if you were Ted Kennedy or George Bush. Nobody thought to say to a third-grade teacher: What would happen if we just demanded that every child in America hit a particular score on a standardized test or they get punished? What might be the unintended consequences?”
Although the union gives far more support to Democrats than to the GOP, Eskelsen Garcia credited both parties for trying to fix overtesting. “Everything was done so poorly that … Republicans and Democrats and President Obama agreed to stop doing stupid things,” she said, referring to the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act in December 2015.
The law is the first major K-12 education law passed since No Child Left Behind in 2002. Although it maintains the federal requirement that all students get tested in third through eighth grade, the new law ends federal consequences that are tied to results on those tests. It also gives states funds to audit their testing systems and identify tests that may be redundant.
Eskelsen Garcia had harsh words about the era of overtesting brought by No Child Left Behind. “The bad news is that our education policy has been so incredibly idiotic and I mean no disrespect to idiots. It’s just been this hodgepodge of one more test and if you don’t hit your quota, turn it over to a charter school that has a worse track record.”
The good news, she says, is that the Every Student Succeeds Act has brought that era “to a screeching halt.”
The National Education Association is the largest labor union in the country, with 3.2 million members.
Read the entirety of her NPR interview here.
Jason Russell is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
