GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

SEATTLE — Here’s another big development: As part of its new approach, the Gates Foundation will advocate for the politically thorny goal of national standards — and will aim to write its own standards and its own national test.

Foundation officials said that the moves are motivated by their frustration with current tests and standards for what children should know, which each state drafts individually as part of the federal No Child Left Behind law. Vicki Phillips, the Gates Foundation’s director of education programs, said the result is a “testing crisis in this country,” in which tests are losing credibility among teachers, who see them as so low-quality that they are useless.

“Let’s admit it,” she said. “We can’t dispense with assessment, but neither can we keep adding low-quality tests.” (more…)