Senate poised to advance testing standards bill as the nation's report card's agency faces cuts
The Wisconsin State Senate takes up a bill Tuesday that would tie Wisconsin student test scores to standards set by a federal agency President Donald Trump has promised to gut.
Lawmakers introduced the bill — AB 1 and its companion bill SB 18 — in reaction to changes the state Department of Public Instruction made last year to testing standards. Those changes included unlinking the standards from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) — also known as the 'nation's report card' — and changing the cut scores and terminology used for achievement levels.
The bill would reverse the changes — requiring testing standards to go back to those used in 2019 and would require standards to be tied to the NAEP. Republican lawmakers have said the changes by DPI 'lowered' the state's academic standards.
'Let's roll back to the standards that we had prior to the pandemic and move those forward as a way to gauge how our students are doing,' Rep. Robert Wittke (R-Caledonia) said at a hearing last week.
The Department of Public Instruction (DPI) has denied the changes lowered standards, saying the changes align assessment cut scores to Wisconsin academic standards. After the Assembly passed the bill last month, threats to the federal agency that oversees NAEP have increased.
The NAEP is a congressionally mandated, representative assessment administered nationally to measure what students across the United States know and can do. The test assesses students in the fourth, eighth and 12th grade in various subjects, including reading and math, though not every student takes the NAEP.
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which was first established in 1867 to collect and report information about education for the nation, is responsible for administering the NAEP. It became part of the Department of Education after the agency was created in 1979.
The agency has been affected by the Trump administration's moves to gut the Department of Education. First, an upcoming math and reading test for 17 year olds was canceled. Peggy Carr, the federal official in charge of the program, was placed on administrative leave. Last week, as a part of vast layoffs in the Department of Education, the statistics agency's workforce was cut from about 100 employees to three, according to the Hechinger Report.
During a committee hearing on the bill last week, the status of the federal agency was a point of debate between lawmakers.
Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) asked lawmakers if they heard about the recent news and if the purpose of the bill was to say, 'we should not eliminate the nation's report card.'
'Would you agree that it's important?' Larson asked.
Wittke said that isn't what the bill is about and said it's 'about Wisconsin standards.'
'I anticipated this question because I see that in the news everybody's talking about the education department and what's being done. They had a $289 billion dollar budget, the things that are being done now are the different administration that's taking a look at the operation of that,' Wittke said. He said the last standards would be 'at least a good starting point for the basis of our standards.'
'The issue is they're eliminating it,' Larson said. He quoted an ABC News report in which one employee who was fired from the agency said producing the 'nation's report card' without a full staff 'would be the equivalent of manning a 13-person sailboat with a 12-month-old' and isn't possible.
Jagler countered that NAEP would not be affected by the cuts.
'If you look deeper into the cuts, NAEP is not affected. NAEP is not affected by what the administration or the education secretary is doing,' Jagler said. He said the independent National Assessment Governing Board, which is responsible for setting NAEP standards, is separate from the NCES.
'It's a totally different thing, but I understand what you're saying, but NAEP will not be affected, which is the heart of this bill,' Jagler said.
While the National Assessment Governing Board is responsible for setting NAEP policy, it does not administer the test as the National Center for Education Statistics does. According to the NAEP website, the NCES also works to 'collect and analyze information and statistics in a manner that meets the highest methodological standards' and 'maintain data credibility through its assessment design, collection, analysis, release, and dissemination procedures.'
The DPI's recent written testimony cites the upheaval within the federal government as one of the top reasons the state education agency opposes the bill. During an Assembly hearing in February the DPI focused on the ways that NAEP and state testing don't align in defending the decision to uncouple state standards from the national rubric.
'Anyone who follows the daily news from Washington knows that this is only the beginning and what comes next is unknown to say the least. It is clear in this time of massive uncertainty, cuts and disruption at NAEP and the USDE that it is not the time to tie Wisconsin statute to anything related to NAEP,' Deputy State Superintendent Tom McCarthy said in written testimony. 'These cancellations will have implications for the accuracy of national-level data.'
The DPI has said that the national report card is helpful to compare students' performance among states, but is not as helpful for understanding whether students have met the state's academic standards. During hearings on the bill, McCarthy explained that in the 2010s many states were moving towards aligning their standards with NAEP, but since that time some states have moved away from the national report card for similar reasons.
Some of those states include Alaska and New York. Meanwhile, states including Virginia are working to align their standards to NAEP.
The bill passed the committee on Friday in a 3-2 party line vote, and is on track to pass in the Republican-led Senate Tuesday.
The bill would then go to Gov. Tony Evers, who has been critical of the testing standards changes but has said he will likely veto the legislation because he thinks the DPI should make decisions about state tests.
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNN
26 minutes ago
- CNN
‘An existential threat': For Silicon Valley, falling behind in AI is a bigger threat than tariffs
If there's one thing the White House, Wall Street and Silicon Valley can agree on, it's that artificial intelligence is a top priority. Tech giants are pouring billions into new data centers and infrastructure to support the technology. The White House came out with an AI action plan in July to boost America's leadership in the space, underscoring the tech's importance to the administration. Wall Street keeps pushing AI-related stocks like Nvidia (NVDA) to new records. But President Donald Trump's trade war has raised questions about whether the administration's policies could work against its big AI push. Certain tariffs could raise the costs of materials and components necessary to support those AI models. For example, the president said on August 6 that he would issue a 100% tariff on semiconductors imports, although he added that companies that have committed to expanding their manufacturing operations in the US would be exempt. (He did not give an exact timeline for when those tariffs would start.) And in late July, he imposed a 50% tariff on copper, which is used in electronic components such as printed circuit boards and chips. But while tariffs could stoke uncertainty around costs, experts say they won't slow technological advancements, primarily because the stakes are simply too high to fall behind in the global AI race. For large tech companies like Meta and Microsoft, losing in AI would be a higher price to pay than any additional costs from tariffs. Dallas Dolen, the US technology, media and telecommunications lead for PricewaterhouseCoopers, said these types of companies likely view the AI boom as an 'existential moment' for their businesses. 'Cost, if you have enough money, is not the most important variable that you take into account when you're told it's an existential threat,' he said to CNN. When Meta, Microsoft and Google reported earnings in late July, one message rang loud and clear: Big Tech is spending big on AI, and it's starting to pay off. Meta spent $17 billion in capital expenditures for the quarter that ended in June, and it saw its earnings per share go up 38% compared to a year ago. Capital expenditures typically refer to money spent on things like data centers and infrastructure, likely a sign that Meta is investing more in the servers needed to power its burgeoning AI services. Wall Street cheered the results; Meta shares (META) rose 9% in after-hours trading when it posted the results on July 30, and shares are up roughly 30% year to date. Microsoft (MSFT) also posted strong results thanks to its cloud computing business. It spent $24.2 billion in capital expenditures during its most recent quarter, and it plans to spend another $30 billion in the coming months, the company said in late July. Microsoft became the second company to reach a $4 trillion valuation last month, following Nvidia, and its shares are up about 26% so far this year. And Google parent Alphabet increased its capital expenditures for 2025 to $85 billion because of demand for its cloud products. The company said its cloud services are used by 'nearly all gen AI unicorns,' referring to privately held companies worth $1 billion or more in the generative artificial intelligence space. Alphabet shares (GOOG) are up nearly 7% year to date. That additional infrastructure may be essential; Goldman Sachs estimates that global power demand from data centers will surge 50% by 2027 and 165% by 2030 compared to 2023 because of AI. 'We have barely scratched the surface of this 4th Industrial Revolution now playing out around the world led by the Big Tech stalwarts such as Nvidia, Microsoft, Palantir, Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon,' Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said in a research note following the companies' earnings results. Trump's rapidly changing tariff policies have made it difficult to estimate how exactly the levies could impact the cost of building and operating data centers. But PwC's Dolen said he's seen estimates indicating that tariffs could increase construction costs by 5% to 7%. The National Association of Manufacturers' outlook survey also found that trade uncertainties and increased costs of raw materials were the top business challenges for manufacturers in the first quarter of 2025. However, big tech companies are likely to eat any additional costs related to AI infrastructure because 'demand is so strong,' said Michelle Brophy, director of research for tech, media and telecom at market intelligence firm AlphaSense. It's a different story for smaller companies that don't have billions to spend each quarter. They also typically have private investors demanding a fast return on investment, and data centers are long-term bets that could take years to show value in a meaningful way. Between 2015 and 2020, it took one to three years on average to construct a data center, according to commercial real estate services firm CBRE. And a data center is useful for 25 years to 30 years on average, McKinsey & Company senior partner Pankaj Sachdeva said in October 2024. Because data centers are long-term projects, 'the degree of uncertainty will have a larger impact in terms of, you know, committing to something that will take multiple years to execute,' said Laurence Ales, a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University. It's also unclear whether Trump's semiconductor tariffs will raise the cost of future data centers. The president said companies that have 'committed' to building in the US won't have to pay a levy on semiconductors. 'But the good news for companies like Apple is, if you're building in the United States, or have committed to build, without question, committed to build in the United States, there will be no charge,' he said on August 6 during an event announcing Apple's $100 billion initiative to produce iPhone parts in the US. Trump didn't specify which companies would be exempt, but chipmaking giants Nvidia and TSMC have both said they would expand their US operations. Experts believe more collaboration between the White House and Silicon Valley is likely to come, possibly easing any potential tariff-induced costs for tech giants. Trump showed his willingness to negotiate with tech leaders earlier this week: He allowed Nvidia and AMD to sell their AI chips to China as long as they provide a 15% cut to the US government in exchange for export licenses. And the White House is reportedly discussing taking a stake in chipmaker Intel. Building AI infrastructure is a key part of the White House's AI action plan, which includes policy recommendations for streamlining permits for facilities like data centers and semiconductor manufacturing facilities. The United States already has more data centers than any other country, according to data from Cloudscene, a platform that connects businesses with cloud services, compiled by Statista. Many of the world's largest cloud providers, like Microsoft and Amazon, are American companies. 'We need to be mindful that this is an area in which we have an advantage,' Matt Pearl, director of the strategic technologies program at the Center for International and Strategic Studies, said to CNN. 'And we don't want to give that up.'
Yahoo
37 minutes ago
- Yahoo
What would happen if America started faking its economic data? Here's what happened when other countries did it
Lying to your lenders is a bad enough idea when you're an individual. It's even worse when you're a country. That's the specter critics of President Donald Trump have raised after he fired the head of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics this month after disappointing jobs data. While there's no indication the data has been rigged (assertions from the White House aside) – or will be rigged in the future – the White House's nomination of a partisan to lead the government's economic data agency was enough to worry global economic and financial circles. There's historical precedent for that fear. Countries like Greece and Argentina have been both been punished by investors for putting out manufactured numbers in the past. 'President Trump has just taken one very negative stop along a slippery slope,' Alan Blinder, a former vice chair of the Federal Reserve, told CNN. 'The next worry is going to be manipulation' of data. At stake is the health of an economy relied upon by nearly every person on earth, directly or indirectly. The US economy affects everyone from Americans in glitzy Manhattan skyscrapers to, quite literally, garbage pickers living in developing nation slums. But while Greece famously faked its way into the European Union and Argentina to this day remains embroiled in legal fights over its own sham numbers, there key differences here: The US economy is the world's biggest, buoyed by its global dominance and its years of strength. The Trump administration says firing Erika McEntarfer wasn't about politics but was instead about making BLS data more rigorous and accurate. 'Historically abnormal revisions in BLS data over the past few years since COVID have called into question the BLS's accuracy, reliability, and confidence. President Trump believes that businesses, households, and policymakers deserve accurate data to inform their decision-making, and he will restore America's trust in the BLS,' said White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers in a statement to CNN. Still, economists warn, the United States is at something of a crossroads now, waiting to see what happens to data series that economists have praised as the gold standard, even if many agree that model updating and modernization could make major improvements to the data's accuracy. 'There's no substitute for credible government data,' said Michael Heydt, the lead sovereign analyst at rating agency Morningstar DBRS. Greece and Argentina In 2004, Greece confessed it had faked numbers on its national deficit and debt to qualify for entry into the eurozone in 2001. But the number-fudging didn't end there. Appointed to Greece's statistical agency in 2010, economist Andreas Georgiou made a bold decision: He worked to publish deficit numbers that aligned with reality. After years of untrustworthy numbers that made the idea of official Greek data a global punchline, his efforts were downright startling. What followed were years of legal fights, and he was prosecuted for allegedly inflating the country's deficit figures. Even the EU itself condemned Greece for the false data. The fakery made the effects of the global financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 significantly worse in Greece. Lenders, skittish of what Greece's actual public finances might be, shied away, demanding increasingly higher rates to hold Greek bonds. Austerity measures demanded by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to bail out Greece angered everyday citizens. Pictures of Greeks rioting in the streets, burning cars and expressing their rage, underscored the dangers. In Argentina, accusations of untrustworthy inflation and economic growth data have dogged Latin America's third-largest economy for decades, scaring off investors despite a wealth of natural resources. Then-President Nestor Kirchner demoted the person in charge of preparing inflation data because she (correctly) reported surging prices in 2007. Everyone from ordinary citizens to global investors treated official inflation data as suspect for years after. That contributed to the country's credit ratings staying in junk territory for years – one of the factors investors typically cite to charge a country more to loan it money. (In Argentina's case, previous sovereign defaults were also a major factor. The unreliable inflation data, after all, did not happen in a vacuum.) That matters to ordinary people because short- and long-term debt, whether from a federal government down to tiny cities and towns, can help fund everything from new schools to roads to essential services. When lenders turn off the money spigot – or charge dearly for access – that means regular people ultimately pay the price. But the United States is far from replicating either scenario, said Robert Shapiro, the chairman of economic advisory firm Sonecon and a former Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs under President Bill Clinton. When the data was revealed to be fake in both Greece and Argentina, those economies were already in terrible shape, Shapiro pointed out. 'So the impact of the markets no longer being able to rely on the data was a little less because the markets were already backing away from investment and employment.' The US economy is growing, hitting a relatively robust annualized rate of 3% in the second quarter. And at over $30 trillion, the US economy has a heft that both Greece and Argentina lack. 'We're the largest economy in the world. We are by far the greatest financial center in the world,' Shapiro said. A global standard Trump fired Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, shortly after the August 1 jobs report showed sharply slower jobs growth than expected for July – and significant downward revisions to data from June and May. Trump accused McEntarfer, without evidence, of manipulating the reports for 'political purposes.' Analysts begged to differ. The US is 'a world leader in providing high-quality data,' Heydt said. 'The BLS in particular is kind of a world class institution… The US for a long time has been kind of the gold standard for data.' William Beach, a former Trump BLS commissioner, told CNN previously that 'there's no way' for McEntarfer or others to rig the data. 'By the time the commissioner sees the number, they're all prepared, they're locked into the computer system,' he said. 'There's no hands-on at all for the commissioner.' But large revisions in the bureau's data have raised eyebrows, not just this month, but in the past as well. A preliminary annual revision in August 2024, for example, showed the US economy had added 818,000 fewer jobs over the past year than previously reported. Those kinds of large revisions might suggest deeper issues, like how the BLS gets their data and constructs their economic models, said Kathryn Rooney Vera, the chief market strategist and chief economist at financial services company StoneX. 'Several economists and research teams I personally engage with have flagged these as structural issues with the data long before Trump's involvement or the firing of the BLS chief,' Rooney Vera told CNN. And Shapiro noted another wrinkle: budget cuts. Already the BLS has said it will cut back on collecting some data because it has fewer people. That, in turn, means it can take longer to get to final numbers for data releases. In the case of the jobs report, big companies usually respond with information first. Smaller companies tend to trail. 'And so you get a lot of responses that come in after the date when the initial estimate is put out,' he said, leading to revisions. Still, the US has other sources of data, both public and private, to round out a fuller picture of the economy. Shapiro pointed to the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis. 'These institutions are made up virtually 100% by statisticians and economists,' Shapiro said. 'They're utterly nonpolitical in their jobs.' Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
38 minutes ago
- Yahoo
What Did Donald Trump Say About MSNBC Host Getting Fired?
Curious why Donald Trump is suddenly targeting MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace? A string of posts on Truth Social reignited attention on his long-running clashes with the media, with Wallace becoming the latest focus. The remarks followed a viral image and sparked a rapid online discussion. Here's what Trump said, how Wallace was drawn into the exchange, and where the broader media dispute stands now. Donald Trump says MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace will get fired Donald Trump targeted MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace in a Truth Social post on Sunday, declaring, 'She is a loser, with bad ratings, who was already thrown off of The View. She will be fired soon! MSNBC IS DEAD!' The president shared a string of attacks against the media after returning from a five-day trip to Scotland and meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska. The exchange began when Trump posted the word 'Bela' without explanation. In response, a user shared a doctored image of Wallace with captions including 'Typhoid Mary Nicole Wallace,' 'Clown News,' and 'Nicole Wallace is afraid of losing her job. Get her a Waaambulance.' Trump replied directly to the image, amplifying the criticism of Wallace. Wallace, who currently hosts Deadline: White House on MSNBC, previously served as White House communications director under President George W. Bush and was once a co-host on The View. Trump referred to her past departure from the talk show in his Truth Social remarks. In another post on the platform, Trump criticized the press coverage of his recent meeting in Alaska with Putin. 'It's incredible how the Fake News violently distorts the TRUTH when it comes to me,' he wrote. 'There is NOTHING I can say or do that would lead them to write or report honestly about me.' The president also commented on negotiations involving Ukraine, stating that peace talks would require territorial concessions. 'If I got Russia to give up Moscow as part of the Deal, the Fake News, and their PARTNER, the Radical Left Democrats, would say I made a terrible mistake and a very bad deal,' he posted. His Truth Social post targeting Wallace received over 17,000 likes and nearly 4,000 shares by early Monday. The post What Did Donald Trump Say About MSNBC Host Getting Fired? appeared first on - Movie Trailers, TV & Streaming News, and More.
