Rep. Bobby Scott Discusses Assessments, ESSA in Education Interview
December 29, 2020
In an interview with Education Week’s Andrew Ujifusa, Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., chairman of the House education committee, reiterated his firm support for administering annual state assessments amid the pandemic. “If we don’t know how far behind these students are, we won’t know how much work we have to do to catch up,” Scott said. Scott also invoked ESSA, the federal law that requires states to administer assessments and use results to target improvements for low performing schools. The congressman echoed Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who in her own interview with Ujifusa a few weeks prior, said that measuring student learning represented a “moral responsibility.” When asked whether accountability measures should be waived during the COVID-19 pandemic, Scott said the matter could be discussed, but that schools should not be casual in their responsibility to assess student learning and identify where “work needs to be done.”