According to US Census Data (excel sheet, Table 11), Nebraska ranks 48^th in the nation in per pupil spending for education, spending just $3,080 per student, well below the national average. Total spending, however, places us at 24^th with $8282 spent per pupil. The difference is made up predominantly by local sources demonstrating not a lack of commitment to education in the state of Nebraska, but a commitment to local control.

Unfortunately, Nebraska is looking at leaving this unique system of accountability behind. Legislative Bill 1157 recently was voted out of the Education Committee and has been prioritized by senator Greg Adams of York. This will do away with our current innovative model (discussed more below) and replace it with a single, state-wide assessment. Instead of Nebraska leading the nation in assessment and accountability, we are considering falling in step with the rest of the nation and its fixation on standardized testing as a single method of judging a student’s educational success.

Doug Christensen, Nebraska’s state commissioner of education, explained to Time Magazine for the article, “How Nebraska Leaves No Child Behind “

“Our public schools are embedded in those communities and those families. So why wouldn’t we first trust those folks? We believe you create the capacity at the local level to do the right thing in the first place, and then you don’t need the state or federal government looking over your shoulder.” TIME

This concept of using the state to empower local governments, schools and communities to provide an excellent education for all Nebraska children is perfectly addressed through our innovative testing model, the School-Based Teacher-led Assessment Reporting System, otherwise known as STARS. This has yielded impressive results, with Nebraska tying Mississippi for the highest percentage of elementary students meeting federal accountability scores in reading (87%) with similarly high numbers in math and in middle schools.

The current model also has a growing list of praise and endorsements:

• The US Department of Education which describes our system as “the nation’s most innovative assessment system (pdf).”
• FairTest, the National Center for Fair and Open Testing cites STARS as a model for assessment.
• The National Council on Measurement in Education,

“…the following lessons can be learned from Nebraska’s experience. Teacher-led assessment systems appear to be both possible and effective in developing benefits such as increased assessment literacy and positive impacts on classroom instruction.” NDE

• An independent study by Susan Brookhart, Coordinator of Assessment and Evaluation, School of Evaluation, Dubuesne University, which determined the STARS system to be both valid and reliable (pdf).
• Senator Edward Kennedy, who met with state officials while the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee deliberated on revisions to NCLB and was impressed with our results.

The current system avoids many of the problems with No Child Left Behind and the resulting high stakes testing by creating assessment tools intended not to punish students, teachers and districts but to inform teachers and guide instruction. As Pat Roschewski, Director of Statewide Assessment for Nebraska, describes it,

It’s not so much an accountability tool as part of the curriculum, instruction, assessment loop. The Rural School and Community Trust

Which is exactly what good assessment is supposed to do. This is possible because STARS does not rely solely on information obtained by a single, statewide standardized test, but may include observations, rubrics, portfolio assessments, teacher input, writing samples, test scores and other student work. This encourages classroom instructions focused on higher order thinking tasks, including writing, problem solving and critical thinking rather than lower order tasks, such as memorization typical of standardized tests.

With the short legislative session, this legislation may conceivably be passed by the legislature before the public really gets a chance to find out what is going on. For those who wish to preserve Nebraska’s unique system of local control in education, please take a moment to write your senator, voicing your concern. Parents, teachers and local school officials know more about the individual needs of our state’s students than the Nebraska legislature or officials in Washington. Let us preserve their autonomy for the benefit of all of Nebraska’s public school students.

*LB987 is a very similar bill which seems to have died in committee.  Senator Raikes was its only proponent with several opponents.  LB 1157, however, has adopted many of the same features.

This is part of a project I am working on to fight legislation which recently passed out of the education committee and has received priority status thus will likely be debated and passed by the legislature this session. It had one lonely opponent in the hearing presented by NSEA (our state chapter of the NEA) representative Jay Sears. Nebraska is the last state in the union with true local control of education, from funding to accountability. LB 1157 will change that, by doing away with our current testing and replacing it with a single statewide test and the creation of a commission independent of voter control to advise the legislature and the elected State Board of Education on education matters.

[tags]homeschool, home school, LB 1157, Raikes, STARS[/tags]