Experts Outline Assessment Systems To Track Goals

By Robert Rothman

WASHINGTON A group of experts last week proposed an ambitious set of new assessment systems--including an early-childhood assessment and a test of college students--that could be used to measure progress on the six national education goals.

Appearing before the National Education Goals Panel, a group of governors and Bush Administration officials, the exports said the new measures would fill in the gaps that remain on the panel's first report card, which is expected to be released this month.

That report "will probably indicate more of what we don't know than what we do know," acknowledged Gov. Carroll A. Campbell Jr. of South Carolina, the chairman...