NCLB Panel Gathers Views on Testing and Data Collection

The No Child Left Behind Act imposes the wrong kind of testing on schools, educators need better systems to interpret the test data they get, and the federal government should help pay for the mandates it imposes, according to several advocates who last week addressed a private panel studying the education law and how to improve it.

The Commission on No Child Left Behind, an independent, bipartisan group formed early this year, ventured onto the battlefield of the policy wars with its hearing in Connecticut, a state that last year sued the federal government over the requirements of the school accountability law championed by President Bush.

The discussion centered on assessments and data systems, with a group that included Connecticut’s education commissioner and its state attorney general. It was the second of five public hearings scheduled for the commission, which will release a report...