For a new federal project, it's moving extraordinarily fast, apparently so that binding commitments can be made during the current fiscal year and before Congress cranks up to do anything. In truth, it's moving far too quickly for something as momentous as national tests in a country that never had anything of the sort before. But haste isn't the main problem. What's most alarming is that these tests will be creatures of the education establishment and prone to its postmodern curricular faddishness. Second, the committees are narrowly based.
Nobody knows whether it is bipartisan.
It doesn't so much care whether you know something as whether you can look it up. If national testing is headed that way, the country would be better off without it. Congress should apply the brakes before a wreck occurs. If a fully independent version of the board I chaired in the 1980s were put in full charge, the risk of crashing would be reduced. We still need a means to compare achievement across state borders.