Copyright 1999 Star Tribune
Star Tribune
(Minneapolis, MN)
December 12, 1999, Sunday, Metro Edition
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 25A
LENGTH: 1736 words
HEADLINE:
Personal struggle guides Wellstone on testing issue;
The senator plans to
work with civil rights groups to challenge the emphasis on standardized student
testing.
BYLINE: Rob Hotakainen; Staff Writer
DATELINE: Washington, D.C.
BODY:
When Paul Wellstone wanted to go to college,
a school adviser told him that his score on a college-entrance test was so low
that he might not even graduate.
Wellstone
was admitted to the University of North Carolina, but a learning disability
caused trauma in his academic life. Taking a final exam in a theater class, he
couldn't understand the diagrams.
"I
couldn't read the diagrams and was too embarrassed to tell the professor and
flunked the final," said Wellstone.
Now a
U.S. senator who earned his doctorate at age 24, Wellstone still has difficulty
with graphs and charts. He says that his learning disability makes it hard for
him to follow sequential directions.
"Let
me put it to you this way: Some of the material is harder for me," Wellstone
said. "I have to spend more time on it."
Minnesota's senior senator is ready to put
his experience to work in Washington: When Congress returns in January,
Wellstone intends to work with civil rights groups in opposing standardized
testing, saying that families will go through "a living hell" if the national
testing mania is not challenged.
"I have
lived this firsthand," he said in an interview.
Wellstone got a cumulative score of
less than 800 out of a possible 1,600 on the SAT, a college-entrance test,
performing well below the national average.
Using a statistical model that included
his scores on standardized tests, an adviser told Wellstone that his grade-point
average would be no higher than 1.7, meaning that he wouldn't graduate.
"I barely was able to get in," he
said.
Defying the experts, Wellstone
completed his undergraduate work in three years and graduated with high honors
at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He took six classes each
summer, joined the wrestling team, married young and became a father at age 20.
Wellstone ran into trouble again
when he tried to get into graduate school. Once again, he said that his
standardized test scores were "incredibly low" in both math and English.
When the chairman of the political
science department wanted to turn down his application, Wellstone protested: "I
had to go in there and say, 'Wait a minute, you're going to turn me down on the
basis of these test scores?' I literally did a sit-in in his office. I went to
his office, and I wouldn't leave until they would let me see him. I stayed for
three hours."
Wellstone, 55, has rarely
discussed his learning disability in public.
He said that he would oppose putting too
much emphasis on standardized tests even if he had not struggled with them, but
he hopes that telling his story will help others.
"There's examples of kids that have been
straight-A students that can't even pass. . . . Well, I was one of those
students," Wellstone said.
Wellstone's learning disability _
which, he said, has never been formally diagnosed _ surfaced as a public issue
in 1982, when Wellstone was drafted to run for state auditor against Arne
Carlson, the Independent-Republican incumbent.
In a radio debate, Carlson pulled a
surprise by reading a transcript of Wellstone's testimony at a South Dakota
utility rate hearing three years earlier, where Wellstone disclosed his learning
disability, saying it prevented him from easily reading charts and graphs.
According to a newspaper account, Carlson said that having an auditor who
couldn't read charts and graphs would be comparable to having a surgeon who
couldn't stand the sight of blood.
Wellstone, who was first elected to
the Senate in 1990, said his disability has not been a hindrance in his Senate
work.
"I'm saying this out of
dignity, not out of, 'I want to be treated like somebody who's not able to hold
his own,' " Wellstone said. "I can hold my own here in everything."
Doing his homework
As anti-testing
advocates search for someone to carry the message in Congress in 2000,
Wellstone's phone is ringing.
With
Congress readying for a full-scale debate on education issues in its upcoming
session, Wellstone says the testing issue will be one of his top priorities,
along with organizing farmers for a showdown over agricultural policies and
trying to get former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley elected as president.
As part of his homework, Wellstone is
planning to meet with urban school officials to plot strategy and build
grass-roots support. He promises to introduce "major legislation" when he
concludes his study.
For Wellstone, a
Democrat and arguably the most liberal member of the Senate, it promises to be
another uphill battle.
As parents and
taxpayers demand more accountability for school spending, Democrats and
Republicans alike are latching on to standardized tests as a way of measuring
educational progress. In the past decade, the idea has won broad public support
in statehouses across the nation: Minnesota is now one of 26 states with a law
requiring students to pass tests with a minimum score before they get a diploma.
As the movement spreads, standardized
tests are now used for practically everything: They determine whether students
move on to another grade, whether they're allowed to enter college, even whether
to reward or penalize teachers on the basis of how students perform on the
tests.
"It's going to lead to the
deadening of teaching," said Wellstone, a former college professor. "Teachers
are going to be under pressure everywhere, including in Minnesota, to teach to
these standardized tests. . . . It's going to be the old work sheet and rote
memorization."
Although the public is
"intrigued by numbers," Wellstone said, the focus on high-stakes testing is a
move that puts more pressure on children who are already facing too much stress.
"We already know who's going to fail:
You're going to fail the same children that are already failing," he said. "And
to me it is cowardly, because you haven't done anything to assure that they have
the same chance to do well."
Wellstone has
two ideas for amendments that he will try to attach to an education bill next
year: One would stop school districts from relying solely on standardized tests
as a measure of accountability; a second would prohibit high-stakes testing of
third-graders.
"I take very serious
exception to basically saying to third-graders, 'We're going to retain you and
you're not going to be passed on to fourth grade,' when we haven't done a darn
thing to change the circumstances of many of these children's lives," he said.
Wellstone's position puts him at odds with
a plan advanced by Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the Republican front-runner in
next year's presidential race. Bush wants to require all states to test every
child in grades 3 through 8 in reading and math. If test scores do not show
improvement, schools that receive federal funds would lose part of their aid.
.
Issues of race
Last
month, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People called on
universities to rely less on college-entrance tests in admitting students,
saying they're unfair to minority members. And on Friday, the National Urban
League denounced the use of high-stakes tests to determine whether students
advance to the next grade, saying that low achievers are being used as "cannon
fodder" in the push for accountability.
For members of Congress, the issue is sure
to touch off a scorching debate over schools and race because some minority
groups score disproportionately lower on standardized tests than do whites. The
debate will come to a head next year when Congress votes on renewing the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act, a law that governs the
nation's K-12 schools.
Rather than just
relying on rigid, multiple-choice-style tests, Wellstone said, the effort to
evaluate students should involve other factors, including portfolios of their
work and how they perform after they graduate. He favors more open-ended tests,
such as essay-writing and problem-solving exams that force students to think
conceptually.
Wellstone is raising
an issue that is becoming increasingly sensitive for states as they rush to set
up accountability systems that rely on tests to measure progress.
Although there's general agreement
on the need to raise standards, it's much harder to reach consensus on the best
tests and what questions should be included in them. As disabled students find
it harder to pass the tests, states are searching for ways to accommodate their
disabilities without lowering expectations for them to learn.
"There's a new struggle now with how
to do that," said Kathy Christie of the Education Commission of the States, a
Denver-based group that monitors state trends in schools. "It is a very
challenging balance and one I think that people all over the country are
struggling with."
But despite the
pitfalls, experts say the testing movement is unlikely to go away. That's partly
because it is being pushed hard by parents who want objective measures of how
their children are performing.
"People need some sort of way to
know if their children are achieving and not just have some touchy-feely way of
monitoring that," Christie said.
'Something good'
The photograph on the right-hand
side of Wellstone's desk shows a smiling young boy with brown hair. He is
wearing a Chicago Bulls jacket and shaking hands with Wellstone, who has one arm
around him.
Wellstone says there is
a story behind the picture: A woman had called the senator to say her son was
getting teased at school _ other kids were calling him a "retard."
When the woman asked Wellstone
whether he would meet with the boy, Wellstone agreed.
He remembers their conversation: "I
said, 'Well, yeah, I know what it's like when people make fun of you,' "
Wellstone said.
After their visit,
the woman sent Wellstone a letter, describing how her son had reacted the next
time he was teased in school.
"She
said he went back to school and he said, 'I met with Senator Wellstone, and he
has a learning disability, and he's the United States senator, and he's not
stupid, and I'm not stupid.' And that's the truth. And that's why I kept that
picture there. I thought I did something good. . . . It reminds me of why I just
feel good about being here."
GRAPHIC: PHOTO
LOAD-DATE: December 13, 1999 
