WASHINGTON, D.C.--In a meeting at the White House this week, the Council of Chief State School Officers became the first national education group to endorse the Clinton Administration proposal for voluntary individual student testing. The proposal is to test 4th graders in reading and 8th graders in math.

Council members, who are the top education officers in each state, reported to Vice President Gore and Secretary of Education Richard Riley that the CCSSO executive board had approved the development of the tests. The vice president filled in for a scheduled meeting with President Clinton.

Availability of these tests, according to the CCSSO board's statement, "could enhance state efforts to expand assessment and accountability systems now in place or planned." However, it also said that "the action is based on the understanding the tests would be used only at state discretion. Any state's decision would be taken only after extensive consultation with key stakeholders."

The statement is the culmination of an evolution in thinking about assessment policy that has taken the chiefs from one end of a spectrum to another. It was their opposition to state-level data that initially prevented the National Assessment of Educational Progress from reporting its data at any level lower than regional. In the mid-1980s, CCSSO changed its policy to support state-level comparisons in NAEP data. The latest endorsement ups the accountability even further, moving from a sampling of students, as in NAEP, to scores for all students taking the tests.

The chiefs also presented a five-point legislative agenda to the Administration officials, including:

• Expand federal support for existing programs which help states and localities meet increased enrollment and service needs by a 15 percent increase in the FY 1998 appropriations over FY 1997.
• Reauthorize the Perkins Vocational Technical Education Act with 20 percent of the funds for statewide exemplary programs.
• Reauthorize the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act with 25 percent funds for statewide services.
• Reauthorize the Higher Education Act, Title V to strengthen the quality of preservice teacher education programs.
• Expand the use of technology in teaching and learning by implementing universal services for schools and libraries under the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and increasing the Technology Literacy Challenge Fund.