Educators breathed a sigh of relief over your bill which puts Missouri's more lofty educational goals in line with the national standards. That does compromise educational standards at least on paper...but without that compromise the mandates of NCLB would not be met.
Updated: 2004-06-05 02:11:41

You ran a story on No-Child-Left-Behind saying that we had lowered Missouri's Educational Testing Standards. That is totally untrue. Nothing in My bill SB 1080 lowers our state's test standards. The Bill requires the measurement of performance and the reporting to match national standards. That would be like looking at a ruler; it has inches on one side but metric on the other. By saying Missouri has progressed "10" without defining what "10" is, we inaccurately report Missouri's progress. My Bill simply requires the test instruments and reporting to match national standards. The State can still place Missouri achievement goals as high as it chooses. This is why every education organization in our state and the Missouri Dept. of Education endorsed the bill. I wish you had asked me about this before reporting falsely that we had lowered standards. It's just not true.