Those folks who have read this blog for a while know that I am a huge fan of Nebraska Commissioner of Education and the STARS project. Now, Time Magazine has discovered the STARS project as well as part of this week’s issue that examines NCLB.

It’s a thoughtful program with broad-based state standards that can then be assessed on a local level where statewide reading, writing and math tests serve to measure reliability of the local assessments. Schools and teachers and students are judged on the work they do every day, rather than the scores of someone else’s test.

I had the chance to talk to a lobbyist from Kaplan a while back, and he mentioned that he was representing schools’ interests as he worked on the reauthorization of NCLB in Washington. So I asked him if, as part of his work for schools, was he lobbying Congress and the DoE to allow more states to develop programs like Nebraska’s. He stammered for a moment and then his answer was that the STARS project was fine for a small state like Nebraska, but it wouldn’t work (too expensive) in a large state like PA.

Is it time to get the testing companies out of education policy and return control to educators? It’s working for Nebraska. To borrow President Bush’s words — how long can we live with the "soft bigotry" of multiple choice exams across all subjects?