How Is Johnny Doing?

New York, September 19, 1997

The defeat in the House last week of the White House proposal to encourage a national testing program brought out the worst at both ends of the political spectrum. Chester Finn of the Hudson Institute put it nicely when he said the conservatives are opposed to any program that has the word "national" in it, and the Left opposes any "test."

At school age, I and my siblings and a few others were taught privately at a makeshift school (much easier to do, at early years, than popularly supposed). But even then (in the 1930's) children in Connecticut could not be exempted from public schooling unless they submitted to a "test" after the first experimental year. That test was administered by the Calvert School in Baltimore. How was this? As simple as that over the years the Calvert "system" of teaching language, mathematics, and history had become something of a standard. Subscriptions to Calvert were inexpensive, and entitled the teacher to send in occasional essays or tests for grade/age validation. These tests, once certified, were sent to the Connecticut educational department, which issued a license to the little private school to continue another year.

National testing (originally a Republican proposal, by the way) is self-evidently a good idea. The parents of the children in the little school in Twin Forks, Indiana, are obviously interested to know what kind of progress their children are making but can't measure relative progress without help. The design of the national test that was proposed is to give exercises in reading to children completing the fourth grade and in mathematics to those completing the eighth grade. On the basis of how the children in Twin Forks make out, the parents have an idea how successfully they are being taught compared to children in Indianapolis, Seattle, and Greenwich.

National Review / October 27, 1997